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Books by Julian Street 

Abroad at Home 

After Thirty 

American Adventures 

The Need of Change 

The Most Interesting American 

(A close-range study of Theodore Roosevelt) 

Paris a la Carte 
Ship-Bored 
Welcome to Our City 
The Goldfish 

(For Children) 

Sunbeams, Inc. 
Mysterious Japan 



MYSTERIOUS 
JAPAN 

BY 
JULIAN STREET 




WITH ILLUSTRATIONS 

FROM PHOTOGRAPHS 

BY THE AUTHOR AND 

OTHERS 



GARDEN CITY, N. Y. , AND TORONTO 

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 

1921 



5% 



g)C!.A630308 



COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY 

JULIAN STREET 

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION 

INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN 

COPTBIQHT, 1920, I92I, BY MCCLUHE's MAGAZINE, INCORPOBATED 
ALIi RIGHTS RESERVED 

COPTBIGHT, 1921, BY THE CENTURY COMPANY, THE OUTLOOK COMPANY, 
P. P. COLLIER & SON COMPANY, AND THE NEW YORK TIMES 

PRINTED AT GARDEN CITY, N. Y., U. S. A. 

First Edition 



NOl'17'21 



TO 

FRANK A. VANDERLIP 



t( 



To see once is better than 
to hear a hundred times'' 

— Mencius 



CONTENTS 
PART I 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. Discussing Curious Traits of the Pacific 

Ocean 1 



16 
26 
38 
48 
63 



II. The Road to Tokyo 

III. The Capital and Costumes 

IV. Earthquakes and Rurglars . 
V. Inversions and the Oriental Mind 

VI. The Isles of Complexities . . 

PART II 

VII. The Gentlest of the Gentler Sex . . 81 

VIII. More About Women 93 

IX. The National Sport 103 

X. On Sake and Its Effects 115 

XI. Diet and Dancing 127 

XII. Geisha Parties . . » 137 

XIII. The Nightless City ....... 154 

XIV. In A Garden 163 

XV. An Explosive Philosopher .... 172 



IX 



X CONTENTS 

PART III 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XVI. Grand Old Men ....... 183 

XVII. Recollections OF Viscount Shibusaw A 201 

XVIII. Viscount Kaneko's Memories of 

Roosevelt 212 

XIX. Are the Japanese Efficient ? . . 228 

XX. Japanese-American Relations . . 242 

XXI. Courtesy and Diplomacy .... 258 

PART IV 

XXII. A Rural Railroad 273 

XXIII. Adventures in a Bath at Kamogawa 284 

XXIV. A Night AT AN Inn 295 

XXV. Pretty Gen Tajima 306 

XXVI. Superstitions and Yuki's Eyes . . 315 

XXVII. "Japanned English" and Art . . 321 

XXVIII. Sayonara 335 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

At the top of the temple steps, above Lake Biwa 

Frontispiece 

FACING PAGE 

Peasants of the region speak of Fuji as Yama, 

the "Honourable Mountain" .... 6 

With his drum and his monkey he is Japan's 
nearest equivalent for our old-style organ- 
grinder 22 

The Japanese is not a slave to his possessions 38 

Sawing and planing are accompHshed with a 

pulling instead of a driving motion ... 38 

The bath of the proletariat consists of a large 

barrel . 54 

While Yuki's fortune was being told I photo- 
graphed her 70 

You cannot understand Japan without under- 
standing the Japanese woman .... 86 

A laundry on the river's brim 94 

Digging clams at low-tide in Tokyo Bay . . 94 

Cocoons — Five thousand silk worms make one 

kimono 118 

xi 



xii ILLUSTRATIONS 

FACING PAGE 

No one without a sweet nature could smile the 

smile of one of these tea-house maids . . 118 

Family luncheon a la Japonaise 134 

Kimi-chiyo was at almost every Japanese- 
style party I attended 154 

It takes two hours to do a geisha's hair . . 162 

Mrs. Charles Burnett in a 15th-Century Japan- 
ese Court costume 170 

A teahouse garden, Tokyo 178 

Viscount Shibusawa 190 

Viscount Kentaro Kaneko 190 

The film was not large enough to hold the fam- 
ily of this youngish fisherman at Nabuto . 214 

Tai-no-ura 230 

The theatre street in Kyoto is one of the most 

interesting highways in the world . . . 246 

The gates of the Tanjo-ji temple .... 246 

Nor could a grande dame in an opera box have 

exhibited more aplomb . . ... 262 

Pretty Gen was between the shafts . . . 278 

The middle-aged cooHe hurriedly seated him- 
self on the bank .294 

Asakusa, the great popular temple of Tokyo . 310 

Saki, the housekeeper, obhgingly posed for me 326 



PART I 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

Far lie the Isles of Mystery, 

With never a port between ; 
Green on the yellow of Asia's breast, 

Like a necklace of tourmaline. 

CHAPTER I 

A Day Goes Overboard — A Sunday Schism — A Desert 
Island — Water, Water Everywhere — Men with Tails — 
Anecdotes of the Emperor of Korea — Korean Reforms — Cured 
by Brigands — The Man who Went to Florida — The Black 
Current — White Cliffs and Coloured Sails — Fuji Ahoy! 

A PECULIAR ocean, the Pacific. A large and 
lonely ocean with few ships and many rutty 
spots that need mending. Ploughing west- 
ward over its restless surface for a week, you come 
to the place where East meets West with a bump that 
dislocates the calendar. It is as though a date-pad in 
your hand were knocked to pieces and the days dis- 
tributed about the deck. You pick them up and 
reassemble them, but one is missing. Poor little 
lost day! It became entangled with the 180th 
meridian and was dragged overboard never to be 
seen again. 
With us, aboard the admirable Kashima Maru, the 



2 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

lost day happened to be Sunday, which caused a 
schism on the ship. In the smokeroom, where poker 
was a daily pastime, resignation was expressed, the 
impression being that with the lost day went the cus- 
tomary Sunday services. But in reaching this con- 
clusion the smokeroom group had failed to reckon 
with the fact that missionaries were aboard. The 
missionaries held a hasty conference in the social 
hall, and ignoring the irreverent pranks of longitude 
and time, announced a service for the day that fol- 
lowed Saturday. Upon this a counter-conference 
was held around the poker table, whereat were 
reached the following conclusions: 

That aboard ship the captain's will is, and of a 
right ought to be, absolute; that the captain had 
pronounced the day Monday ; that in the eyes of this 
law-abiding though poker-playing group, it there- 
fore was Monday; that the proposal to hold church 
services on Monday constituted an attempt upon 
the part of certain passengers to set their will above 
that of the captain; that such action was, in the 
opinion of the smokeroom group, subversive to the 
ship's discipline, if indeed it did not constitute 
actual mutiny on the high seas; that members 
of this group could not, therefore, be party to the 
action proposed; that, upon the contrary, they 
deemed it their clear duty in this crisis to stand back 
of the captain; and finally, that in pursuance of this 
duty they should and would remain in the smoke- 
room throughout the entire day, carrying on their 
regular Monday game, even though others might 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 3 

see fit to carry on their regular Sunday game else- 
where in the vessel. 

Had this been the Atlantic crossing we should by 
now have landed on the other side ; yet here we were, 
pitching upon a cold gray waste a few miles south 
of Behring Sea, with Yokohama a full week away. 

Yet land — ^land of a kind — ^was not so distant as I 
had imagined. Early one morning in the middle 
of the voyage my steward, Sugimoto, came to my 
cabin and woke me up to see it. (A splendid fellow, 
Sugimoto; short and round of body, with flesh soKd 
and resihent as a hard rubber ball, and a circular 
sweet face that Raphael might have painted for 
a cherub, had Raphael been Japanese.) 

"Good morning, gentleman," said he. "Gentle- 
man look porthole, he see land." 

I arose and looked. 

A flounce of foam a mile or two away across the 
water edged the skirt of a dark mountain jutting 
abruptly from the sea. Through a mist, like a half- 
raised curtain of gray gauze, I saw a wintry peak 
from which long tongues of snow trailed downward, 
marking seams au-d gorges. It was, in short, 
just such an island as is discovered in the nick of 
time by a shipwrecked whaler who, famished and 
freezing in an open boat, has drifted for days through 
the storm-tossed pages of a sea stor>'. He would land 
in a sheltered cove and would quickly discover a 
spring and a cave. He would de^^se a skilful 
means of killing seals, would dress himself in their 



4 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

skins, and subsist upon their meat — preceded by the 
customary clam and fish courses. For three years 
he would live upon the island, believing himself 
alone. Then suddenly would come to him the 
knowledge that life in this place was no longer safe. 
About the entrance to his cave he would find the 
tracks of a predatory animal — fresh prints of French 
heels in the snow! 

Austere though the island looked, my heart 
warmed at the sight of it; for there is no land so 
miserable that it is not to be preferred above 
the sea. Moreover I saw in this land a harbinger. 
The Empire of Japan, I knew, consisted of several 
large islands — to the chief one of which we were 
bound — and some four thousand smaller ones 
stretching out in a vast chain. This island, then, 
must be the first one of the chain. From now on 
we would no doubt be passing islands every little 
while. The remainder of the voyage would be like 
a trip down the St. Lawrence River. 

Soothed and encouraged by this pleasant thought, 
and wishing always to remember this outpost of the 
Island Empire, I asked its name of Sugimoto. 

"That Araska, gentleman," he answered. 

"Are you glad to see Japan again, Sugimoto.^" 

"That Araska," he repeated. 

"Yes. A part of Japan, isn't it.^" 

Sugimoto shook his head. 

"No, gentleman. Araska American land." 

"That island belongs to the United States?" 

"Yes, gentleman. That Araska." 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 5 

I had never heard of an island of that name. 
Surely Sugimoto was mistaken in thinking it an 
American possession. 

"Could you show it to me on the map.^" I asked. 

From my dresser he took a folder of the steamship 
company and opening to a map of the Pacific, 
pointed to one of many Httle dots. "Aleutian 
Islands," they were marked. They dangled far, 
far out from the end of that peninsula which re- 
sembles a long tongue hanging from the mouth 
of a dog, the head of which is rudely suggested 
by the cartographic outhnes of our northernmost 
territory. We had sailed directly away from our 
native land for a week, only to find ourselves, at 
the end of that time, still in sight of its outskirts. 
Like many another of his fellow countrymen, good 
Sugimoto had difficulties with his /'s and r's. He 
had been trying to inform me that the island — the 
name of which proved to be Amatisnok — belonged 
to Alaska. 

I began to study the map and look up statistics 
concerning the Pacific Ocean. It was a great mis- 
take. It is not pleasant to discover that three 
quarters of the world is worse than wasted, being 
entirely given over to salt water. Nor is it pleasant 
to discover, when far out on the Pacific, that more 
than a third of the surface of the earth is taken up 
by this one ocean. Any thought of getting General 
Goethals to remedy this matter by filling up the 
Pacific is, moreover, hopeless, for all the land in the 
world, if spread over the Pacific's surface, would only 



6 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

make an island surrounded by twenty miUion square 
miles of sea. 

Feeling depressed over these facts I now began 
to look for points of merit; for we are told to try to 
find the good in everything, and though I fear 
I pay but scant attention to this canon when in 
my normal state ashore, at sea I become another 
man. 

On land I have a childish feehng that the Creator 
has not time to pay attention to me, having so 
many other people to look after; but a ship far out 
at sea is a conspicuous object. I feel that it must 
catch His eye. I feel Him looking at me. And 
though I hope He likes me, I see no special reason 
why He should. I am so full of faults, so critical, 
so prejudiced. Consider, for instance, the way I 
used to go on about President Wilson and Josephus 
Daniels and W. J. Bryan. I am afraid that was 
very wrong in me. Instead of studying their faihngs 
I should have remedied my own. I should have 
given more to charity. I should have been more 
gentle in expressing my opinions. I should have 
written often to my sister, who so enjoys getting 
letters from me. I should have looked for good in 
everything. 

Immediately I begin to run about the ship looking 
for it. And lo ! I find it. The ship is comfortable. 
It seems to be designed to stay on top of the water. 
The table is beyond criticism. The passengers 
are interesting. The very vastness of this ocean 
tends to make them so. Instead of being all of a 




Peasants of the region speak of Fuji not by name but merely 
as Yama, the "Honourable Mountain" 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 7 

pattern, as would be one's fellow passengers on an 
Atlantic liner, they are a heterogeneous lot, familiar 
with strange corners of the globe and fuU of curious 
tales and bits of information. Instead of talking 
always of hotels in London, Paris, Venice, Rome 
and Naples, they speak familiarly of Seoul, Shanghai, 
Peking, Hongkong, Saigon and Singapore. And 
amongst them are a few having intimate acquaint- 
ance with islands and cities so remote that their 
names sing in the ears like fantastic songs. Fra- 
grant names. The Celebes and Samarkand! 

There was a Mttle Englishman who hunted butter- 
flies for a museum. He told me of great spiders 
as big as your two hands, that build their webs be- 
tween the trees in the jungles of Borneo — I think 
he said Borneo. But whatever the name of the 
place, he found there natives having tails from two 
to four inches long — I think he said two to four 
inches. But whatever the length of the tails, he 
had photographs to prove that tails there were. 
The latest theory of man's evolution, he told me, 
is not the theory of Darwin, but holds that there 
existed long ago an intermediary creature between 
man and ape, from which both are derived — the 
ape having, I take it, evolved upward into the tree- 
tops, while man evolved downward — down, down, 
down, until at last came jazz and Lenine and 
Trotzky. 

Another man had lived for years in Korea. In the 
old days before it was taken over by Japan, he said, 
it was a perfect comic-opera country with the 



8 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

Emperor as chief comedian. He knew and liked 
the Emperor, and told me funny stories about him. 
Once when His Majesty's teeth required fiUing 
the work had to wait until the American dentist in 
Seoul could have a set of instruments made of gold, 
that being the only metal permitted within the 
sacred confines of the Imperial mouth. 

The concession to build an electric street railway in 
Seoul was given to Americans on the understanding 
that they should import motormen from the United 
States and that these should be held in readiness to 
fly to the Emperor's aid in case of trouble. A 
private wire connected the Imperial bedchamber 
with that of the manager of the street-car company, 
so that the latter might be quickly notified if help 
was needed. For more than a year the wire stood 
unused, but at last late one night the beU rang. 
The manager leaped from his bed and rushed to 
the special telephone. But it was not a revolution. 
The Emperor had just heard about a certain office 
building in New York and wished to know if it had, in 
fact, as many stories as had been reported to him. 

In his fear of revolution or invasion the Emperor 
built a palace adjoining the American legation. And 
when, as happened now and then, there came a coup 
d'etat, threatening his personal safety, he would 
get a ladder and climb over the wall separating 
the back yard of the palace from that of the American 
minister. This occurring frequently, so embarrassed 
the latter, that in order to put an end to His Maj- 
esty's habit of informal caUing, he caused the top 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 9 

of the wall to be covered with inhospitable broken 
glass. 

Up to the time of the annexation of Korea by 
Japan, my informant said, the Koreans were entirely 
without patriotism, but the Japanese so oppressed 
them that a strong national feeling was engendered 
after it was too late. That the Japanese had been 
harsh and brutal in Korea, he said, was indisputable, 
but this was the work of militarists, and was con- 
trary to the will of the people of Japan who, when 
they learned what had been going on, protested 
with such violence that newspapers had to be sup- 
pressed in Japanese cities, and there was clubbing 
of rioters in the streets by the police. This caused 
immediate reform in Korea. The brutal Governor 
General was recalled and was replaced by Admiral 
Baron Saito, a humane and enlightened statesman 
who has earnestly striven to improve conditions, 
with the result that Koreans are to-day being better 
educated and better governed than they have been 
within the memory of man. Also they are prosper- 
ing. First steps are now being taken toward allow- 
ing them to participate in their own government, 
and if conditions seem to justify the extension of 
their privileges, it is hoped that they may ultimately 
have home rule. 

From another passenger I got a story about an 
American who was captured by brigands in China. 
The victim was a civil engineer, very skilful at lay- 
ing out railroad lines. The American International 
Corporation wished to send him to China to plan a 



10 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

railroad, but he demurred because he was in bad 
health. Finally, on being pressed by the company, 
he consented to go if his private physician was sent 
with him. This was agreed to. 

In China brigands caught the civil engineer but 
not the doctor. They kept him for a long time. 
He was taken from place to place over the roughest 
country, walking all night, sleeping by day in damp 
caves, eating coarse and insufficient food. At 
last he was released. He returned in rugged health. 
The Hfe of the brigand was just the thing that he 
had needed. 

"Out here on the seas, without home newspapers," 
one thoughtful traveller remarked to me, "we lose 
touch with the world and never quite make up all 
that we have lost. When we land we hear about 
some of the things that have happened, but there 
are minor events of which we never hear, or of which 
the news comes to us long after, as a great surprise. 
I recall one example from my own experience. 

"In the New England town in which I live there 
was a banker, a prominent old citizen with a reputa- 
tion for being very close, and none too scrupulous in 
the means he sometimes took for making money. 

"It had for years been his habit to go every win- 
ter to Florida, but his daughter, who kept house for 
him, liked the northern winter and remained at 
home. 

"Some years ago, while I was in the Far East, 
this old man died, but I was gone for a long time 
and heard nothing of it. When I got back it was 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 11 

winter. One day I met the daughter and stopped 
to speak to her. It was snov/ing and a cold wind 
was whistKng down the street. We had been hav- 
ing trouble with the furnace at our house and my 
mind was full of that. So when I met her I said: 

"'One good thing — on a day like this you don't 
have to worry about your father. Furnaces don't 
get out of order down there where he is.' 

"Now, when I am away, I have the newspapers 
saved, and on my return I read them all if it takes 
me a whole week." 

Somewhere in those seas that lie between the 
islands of Formosa and Luzon there arises a wide 
tepid current, known as the Black Current which, 
flowing northward, tempers the climate of Hondo, 
the main island of Japan. "To this beneficent 
stream," remarks the guidebook, "the shores of 
Nippon owe their luxuriant greenness." 

As we crossed the Black Current a certain green- 
ness hkewise was revealed upon my countenance. 
I did not find the stream beneficent at all. It 
was only about two hundred miles wide, however, 
and by morning the worst of it was past. I came on 
deck to find the Kashima Maru riding like a placid 
bulky water-fowl upon a friendly sunlit sea. And 
far away on the horizon lay a streak of mist that 
was Japan. 

In an hour or two the mist attained more sub- 
stance. It was like a coloured lantern-slide coming 
slowly into focus. Someone showed me a white 



12 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

dot upon the shadow of a hill and said it was a 
lighthouse, and some one else discerned a village 
in a little smudge of buff where land and water met. 
Gulls were circling around us — gulls with dark ser- 
rated margins to their wings; smaller than those we 
had seen on Puget Sound. Foreign gulls! 

Since leaving Victoria we had sighted only one ship, 
but now an unladen freighter, pointing high and 
showing a broad strip of red underbody, reeled 
by like a gay drunliard, and was no sooner gone 
astern than we picked up on the other bow a wallow- 
ing stubby caravel with a high-tilted poop like that 
of the Santa Maria — a vessel such as I had never 
dreamed of seeing asail in sober earnest. And she 
was hardly gone when we overhauled a little fleet 
of fishing boats having the lovely colour of unpainted 
wood, and the slender graceful lines of viking ships. 
All of them but one carried a square white sail on 
either mast, but that one had three masts and three 
sails, two of which were yellow, while the third was of 
a tender faded indigo. It promised things, that 
boat with coloured sails! 

Distant white cliffs, tall and ghostly like those 
of Dover, brought memories of another island king- 
dom, far away through the cheek of the world, 
whose citizens were at this moment sleeping their 
midnight sleep — last night. Presently the white 
clifiPs vanished, giving place to a wall of hills with 
conical tops and bright green sides splattered with 
blue-green patches of pine woods. And when I 
saw the brushwork on those wrinkled cone-shaped 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 13 

hills, so unlike any other hills that I had seen, I 
knew that Hokusai and Hiroshige, far from being 
merely decorative artists, had "painted nature as 
they saw it." 

The villages along the shore could now be seen 
more plainly — rows of one-story houses taking their 
colour from the yellow wood of which they were 
constructed, and the yellow thatch of their roofs, 
both tempered by the elements. 

Then, as I was looking at a village on a promontory 
reaching out to meet us, some one cried: 

"Fuji! Come and look at Fujiyama!" and I ran 
forward and gazed with straining eyes across the 
sea and the hilltops to where, shimmering white in 
the far-off sky, there hmig — was it indeed the famous 
fan-shaped cone, or only a luminous patch of cloud .^^ 
Or was it anything at allP 

"Where's Fuji.li" 

"Right there. Don't you see?" 

"No. Yes, now I think " 

"It's gone. No! There it is again!" 

So must the chorus ever go. For Fuji, most 
beautiful of mountains, is also the most elusive. 
Later, in Tokyo, when some one called me to come 
and see it, it disappeared while I was on the way 
upstairs. 

Splendid as Vesuvius appears when she floats in 
opalescent mist above the Bay of Naples with her 
smoke plume lowering above her, she is, by com- 
parison with Fuji, but a tawny Httle ruffian. Vesuvius 
rises four thousand feet while Fuji stands three 



14 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

times as high. And although the top of Pike's 
Peak is higher than the sacred mountain of Japan 
by some two thousand feet, the former, starting 
from a plain one mile above sea-level, has an immense 
handicap, whereas the latter starts at "scratch." 
Thus it comes about that when you look at Pike's 
Peak from the plains what you actually see is a 
mountain rising nine thousand feet; whereas when 
you look at Fuji from the sea the whole of its twelve 
thousand and more feet is visible. 

Aside from Fuji's size, the things which make it 
more beautiful than Vesuvius are the perfection of 
its contour, the snow upon its cone, and the at- 
mospheric quahty of Japan — that source of so 
much disappointment to snapshotting travellers 
who time their pictures as they would at home. 

A Japanese friend on the ship told me that though 
Fuji had been quiescent for considerably longer 
than a century there was heat enough in some of 
its steaming fissures to permit eggs to be boiled. 
Eighteen or twenty thousand persons make the 
cHmb each year, he said, and some devout women 
of seventy years and over struggle slowly up the 
slope, taking a week or more to the ascent, which is 
made by able-bodied men in half a day or less. 
Peasants of the region speak of Fuji not by name 
but merely as Yama, "the Honourable Moun- 
tain," but my Japamese friend added that though 
the honorific 0, used so much by his countrymen, 
was translated Hterally into EngHsh as "honourable," 
it did not have, in the Japanese ear, any such elabor- 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 15 

ate and ponderous value, but was spoken automatic- 
ally and often only for the sake of cadence. 

"We say without thinking," he explained, "just 
as you begin with *dear sir,' in writing to a stranger 
who is not dear to you at all." 

For Fuji, however, I Kke the full English poly- 
syllabic of respect. It is indeed an "honourable 
mountain." The great volcanic cone hanging, as 
it sometimes seems, in thin blue air, has an ethereal 
look suggesting purity and spirituaHty, so that it is 
not difficult for the beholder from another land to 
sense its quaUty of sacredness, and to perceive its 
fitness to be the abiding place of that beautiful 
goddess whose Japanese name means "Princess- 
who-makes-the-Blossoms-of-the-Trees-to-Flo wer. ' ' 

"There are two kinds of fools," says a Japanese 
proverb: " — those who have never ascended Fuji 
and those who have ascended twice." To this 
category I would add a third kind of fool, the great- 
est of them aU: the fool who fails to appreciate the 
spectacle of Fuji. A creature who would be dis- 
appointed in Fuji would be disappointed in any 
spectacle, however grand — be it the Grand Canon, 
the Grand Canal, or the Grand Central Station. 



CHAPTER II 

The Pier at Yokohama — The Flower-People — A Celestial 
Suburb — French Cooking and Frock Coats — From a Car- 
Window — Elfin Gardens — ''The Land of Little Children'' 

THE satisfying thing about Japan is that it 
always looks exactly like Japan. It could 
not possibly be any other place. The gulls 
are Japanese gulls, the hills are Japanese hills, 
Tokyo Bay is a Japanese bay, and if the steamers 
anchored off the port of Yokohama are not all 
of them Japanese, many of them have, at least, an 
exotic look, with their preposterously fat red funnels 
or their slender blue ones. Even the Kttle launches 
from which the port authorities board you as you 
lie in the harbour are not quite like the launches 
seen elsewhere, and though the great stone pier, 
to which at last you are warped in, might of itself 
fit the pictiu'e of a British seaport, the women and 
children waiting on the pier, trotting along beside 
the ship as she moves slowly to her berth, waving 
and smiling up at friends on deck, are costumed in 
inevitable suggestion of great brilliant flower- 
gardens agitated by the wind. Amongst these 
women and children in their bright draperies, the 
dingy European dress of the male is almost lost, so 

16 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 17 

that, for all its pantaloons and derby hats, Japan 
is still Japan. 

Through this garden of chattering, laughing, 
fluttering human flowers we made our way to — score 
one for New Japan— a limousine, and in this vehicle 
were whirled off through the crowd: a jumble of 
blue-clad coolies wearing wide mushroom hats and 
the insignia of their employers stamped upon their 
backs, of rickshas, and touring cars, and motor- 
trucks, and skirted schoolboys riding bicycles, and 
curious little drays with tiny wheels, drawn by 
shaggy little horses which are always led, and 
which, when left to stand, have their front legs 
roped. Over a bridge we went, above the peaked 
rice-straw awnings of countless wooden cargo boats; 
then up a narrow road, surfaced with brown sand, 
between rows of delightful little wooden houses, 
terraced one above the other, with fences of board 
or bamboo only partly concealing infinitesimal 
gardens, and sliding front doors of paper and wood- 
lattice, some of which, pushed back, revealed straw- 
matted floors within, with perhaps more flower-like 
women and children looking out at us — the women 
and the larger children having babies tied to their 
backs. By some of the doors stood pots containing 
dwarf trees or flowering shrubs, by others were 
hung light wooden birdcages from which a snatch 
of song would come, and in front of every door was 
a low flat stone on which stood rows of little wooden 
clogs. Dogs of breeds unknown to me sat placidly 
before their masters' doors — brown dogs to match 



18 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

the houses, black and white dogs, none of them very 
large, all of them plmnp and benignant in expression. 
Not one of them left its place to run and bark at 
our car. They were the pohtest dogs I have ever 
seen. They simply sat upon their haunches, smiling. 
And the women smiled, and the children smiled, 
and the cherry blossoms smiled from branches over- 
head, and the sun smiled through them, casting over 
the brown roadway and brown houses and brown 
people a lovely splattering of light and shadow. 

And what with all these things, and a glimpse of a 
torii and a shrine, and the musical sound of scraping 
wooden clogs upon the pavement and the faint 
pervasive fragrance, suggesting blended odours 
of new pine wood, incense, and spice — ^which is to 
me the smell of Japan; though hostile critics will 
be quick to remind me of the odoiu* of paddy fields 
— ^what with all these sights and sounds and smells, 
so alluring and antipodal, I began to think we must 
be motoring through a celestial suburb, toward 
the gates of Paradise itself. 

But instead of climbing onward up the hill to 
heaven we swung off through a garden blooming 
with azaleas white, purple, pink, and salmon-colour, 
and drew up at a pleasant clubhouse. There we 
had luncheon; and it is worth remarking that, 
though prepared by Japanese, both the menu and 
the cooking were in faultless French. The Japanese 
gentlemen at this club were financiers, officials and 
prominent business men of Yokohama. One or 
two of them wore the graceful and dignified hakama 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 19 

and haori — the silk skirt and coat of formal native 
dress — but by far the larger niunber were habited 
in European style: some of the younger men in 
cutaways, but the majority in frock-coats, garments 
still widely favoured in Japan, as are also congress 
gaiter shoes — a most convenient style of footwear in 
a land where shoes are shed on entering a house. 

Luncheon over, we drove to the station of the 
electric railroad that parallels the steam railroad 
from the seaport to the capital — ^which, by the way, 
will itself become a seaport when the proposed chan- 
nel has been dredged up Tokyo Bay, now navigable 
only by small boats. 

From the car window we continued our observa- 
tions as we rushed along. The gage of the steam 
railway is narrower than that of railways in America 
and Europe; the locomotives resemble European 
locomotives and the cars are small and light by com- 
parison with ours. The engine whistles are shrill, 
and instead of two men, three are carried in each 
cab. This we shall presently discover, is character- 
istic of Japan. They employ more people than we 
do on a given piece of work — a discovery rather 
surprising after all that we have heard of Japanese 
eflBciency. But Japan's reputation for efficiency 
is after all based largely on her military exploits. 
Perhaps her army is efficient. Perhaps her navy 
is. Certainly the disciphne and service on the 
Kashima Maru would bear comparison with those 
on a first-rate English ship. Yet why three men 
on a locomotive? Why several conductors on a 



20 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

street car? Why three servants in an ordinary 
middle-class home which in America or Em'ope 
would be run by one or two? Why fifteen servants 
in a house which we would run with six or eight? 
Why so many motor cars with an assistant sitting 
on the seat beside the chauffeur? Why so few 
motors? Why men and women drawing heavy 
carts that might so much better be drawn by horses 
or propelled by gasolene? Why these ill-paved 
narrow roads? Why this watering of streets with 
dippers or with little hand-carts pulled by men? 
Why a dozen or more coolies operating a hand- 
driven pile-driver, lifting the weight with ropes, 
when two men and a little steam would do the work 
so much faster and better? Why, for the matter 
of that, these dehghtful rickshas which some jester 
of an earher age dubbed "pull-man" cars? Why 
this waste of labour everywhere? 

Can it be that in this densely populated little 
country there are more willing hands than there is 
work for willing hands to do? Must work be spread 
thin in order to provide a task and a Hving for every- 
one? But again, if that was it, would people work 
as hard as these people seem to? Would women 
be at work beside their husbands, digging knee 
deep in the mud and water of the rice fields, dragging 
heavy-laden carts, handling bulky boats? And 
would the working hours be so long? Here is some- 
thing to be looked into. But not now. 

It is a hand-embroidered country, Japan, though 
the embroidery is done in fine stitches of an un- 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 21 

familiar kind. The rural landscape is so formed 
and trimmed and cultivated that sometimes it 
achieves the look of a lovely little garden, just as 
the English landscape sometimes has the look of 
a great park. Here, much more than in England, 
every available inch of land is put to use. Where 
hillsides are so steep that they would wash away 
if not protected, tidy walls of diamond-shaped stone 
are laid dry against them; but whenever possible the 
hillsides are terraced up in a way to remind one of 
vineyards along the Rhine and the Moselle, making 
a series of shelf -like Kttle fields, each doing its utmost 
to help solve the food problem. 

It is hard to say whether the towns along this 
line of railroad are separated by groups of farms, 
or whether the groups of farms are separated by 
towns, so even is the division. The farms are very 
small so that the open country is dotted over with 
little houses — the same low dainty houses of wood 
and paper that delighted us when we first saw them, 
and which will always dehght us when, from the 
other side of the world, we think of them. For 
there is something in the sight of a neat little Japan- 
ese house with its few feet of garden which appeals 
curiously to one's imagination and one's sentiment. 
It is all so light and lovely, yet all so carefully con- 
trived, so highly finished. To the Western eye — 
at least to mine — it has a quality of fantasy. I 
feel that it cannot be quite real, and that the people 
who live in it cannot be quite real: that they are 
part — say a quarter — fairy. And I ask you: who 



22 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

but people having in their veins at least a Uttle 
fairy blood would take the trouble to plant a row of 
iris along the ridges of their roofs P 

The houses, too, are often set in elfm situations. 
One will stand at the crest of a little precipice 
with a minute table-land of garden back of it; an- 
other will nestle, half concealed, in a small sheltered 
basin where it seems to have grown from the ground, 
along with the trees and shrubbery surrounding 
it — the flowering hedges and the pines with branches 
hke extended arms in drooping green kimono sleeves; 
still another rises at the border of a pond so small 
that in a land less toyhke it would hardly be a pond^; 
yet here it is adorned with grotesquely lovely rocks 
and overhanging leaves and blooms, and in the 
middle of it, like as not, will be an island hardly 
larger than a cartwheel, and on that island a stone 
lantern with a mushroom top, and reaching to it 
from the shore a deUcate arched bridge of wood 
beneath which drowsy carp and goldfish cruise, 
with trailing fins and rolKng rimiinative eyes. 

Just as one better understands Hokusai and Hi- 
roshige for having seen the coastal hills, one under- 
stands them better for having seen these magic 
Httle houses with their settings resembhng so charm- 
ingly those miniature landscapes made with moss, 
gravel, small rocks, and dwarf trees, arranged in 
china basins by a Japanese gardener, who is some- 
times so kind as to let us see his productions in a 
window on Fifth Avenue. Often one feels that 
Japan herself is hardly more than such a garden 




With his drum and his monkey he is Japan's nearest equiva- 
lent for our old-style organ-grinder 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 23 

on a larger scale. Over and over again one encoun- 
ters in the larger, the finish and fantastic beauty of 
the smaller garden. And when one does encounter 
it, one is happy to forget the politics and problems 
of Japan, and to think of the whole country as a 
curiously perfect table decoration for the parlour of 
the world. 

And the children! Children everywhere ! Children 
of the children Kipling wrote of thirty years ago, 
when he called Japan 

"... . the land of Little Children, where the 

Babies are the Kings." 

Of course we had heard about the children. 
Everyone who writes about Japan, or comes home 
and talks about Japan, tells you about them. Yet 
somehow you must witness the phenomenon before 
you grasp the fact of their astonishing profusion. 
Even the statistics, showing that the population 
of Japan increases at the rate of from 400,000 to 
700,000 every year, don't begin to make the picture, 
though they do make apparent the fact that there 
are several million children of ten years or younger 
— about two thirds of whom go clattering about in 
wooden clogs, while the remainder ride on the 
backs of their parents and grandparents and brothers 
and sisters. All in a country smaller than the State 
of Cahfornia. 

Children alone, children in groups of three or 
four, children in dozen lots. Children in all sizes, 



24 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

colourings, attitudes, and conditions. Children block- 
ing the roads, playing under the trees or in them, 
romping along paths, swarming over little piles of 
earth like bees on bell-shaped hives. Children 
watching the passing cars, children in tiny skiffs, 
children wading in ponds. Children glimpsed 
through the open wood and paper shoji of their 
matchbox houses, scampering on clean matted 
floors or placidly supping — the larger of them 
squatting before trays and operating nimble chop- 
sticks, the smaller nursing at the mother's breast. 
(Sometimes those children nursed at the breast are 
not so very small — which is the reason why so many 
Japanese have over-prominent teeth.) Children 
brown and naked, ragged children, children in 
indigo or in bright flowered kimonos and white 
aprons. Demure children, wild rampageous chil- 
dren, children with shaved heads, children with jet- 
black manes bobbing about their ears and faces as 
they run. Chubby children with merry eyes and 
cheeks like rosy russet apples. Children achieving 
the impossible: dehghting the eye despite their 
dirty little noses. 

Can it be that they pile the children on each 
others' backs, making two layers of them, because 
there isn't room upon the ground for all of them at 
once.^ Babies riding on their mothers' backs travel 
in comparative dignity and safety. Under their 
soft Httle mushroom hats they sleep through many 
things — street-car trips, shopping expeditions and 
gabbhng parties in the tea-rooms of department 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 25 

stores. But those who ride the shoulders of their 
elder brothers lead lives of wild adventure. Their 
presence is not allowed to interfere with the progress 
of young masculine life. The brother will chmb 
trees, walk on stilts and even play baseball, seem- 
ingly unconscious of the weight and the fragility 
of the Httle charge attached to him by ties of blood 
and cotton. If the drowsy baby head drops over, 
getting in the way, the brother alters its position 
with a bump from the back of his own head. When 
the small rider slips down too far, whether on 
the back of child or adult, its bearer stoops and bucks 
hke a broncho, tossing baby into place again. 
Through all of which the infant generally sleeps. 
Are its dreams disturbed, one wonders, when big 
brother slides for second-base ? I doubt it. Knowing 
no cradle, no easy-riding baby carriage, the Japanese 
baby is from the first accustomed to a Hfe of action. 
It seems to be a fatalist. And indeed it would 
appear that some special god protects the baby, 
for it always seems to go unscathed. 

Sometimes in the streets the children outnumber 
their elders by two or three to one. Contemplating 
them one can easily fall into the way of looking 
upon adults as mere adjuncts, existing only to wash 
the children, see that they wear aprons, and give 
them their meals. 




CHAPTER III 

Growing Tokyo — Architecture and Statuary — The Western- 
ization of Japan — The Story of Costumes — Women's Dress 
Advantages of Standardized Styles — Selection and Rejection 

S YOU reach the outskirts of Tokyo you 
think you are coining to another Httle 
town, but the town goes on and on, and 
finally as the train draws near the city's heart large 
buildings, bulking here and there above the general 
two-story tile roofline, inform you in some measure 
of the importance of the place. In 1917 Tokyo 
ranked fifth among the cities of the world, with a 
population almost equal to Berlin's, and it seems 
likely that when rehable statistics for the world 
become available again we shall find that the popula- 
tion of BerKn has at most remained stationary, 
while that of Tokyo has grown even more rapidly 
than usual, owing to exceptional industrial activity 
and to the influx of Russian refugees, whose presence 
in large niunbers in Japan has created a housing 
problem. Nor shall I be surprised to hear that 
Tokyo has passed Chicago in the population race, 
becoming third city of the world. 
- The central railroad station exhibits the capital's 
modern architectural trend. It is conveniently 

26 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 27 

arranged and impressive in its magnitude as seen 
across the open space on which it faces, but there its 
merit stops. Like most large foreign-style buildings 
in Japan, it is architecturally an ugly thing. Stand- 
ing at the gate of Japan's chief city, it has about 
it nothing Japanese. Its fagade is grandiose and 
meaningless, and as one turns one's back upon it 
and sees other large new public structures, one is 
saddened by the discovery that the Japanese, skilful 
at adaptation though they have often shown them- 
selves, have signally failed to adapt the requirements, 
methods, and materials of modern building to their 
old national architectural lines. One thing is certain, 
however: there will be no new public buildings more 
imsightly than those already standing. This style of 
architecture in Japan has touched bottom. 

In twenty years or so I believe the ugliness of these 
modern piles will have become apparent to the 
Japanese. It will dawn upon them that they need 
not go to Europe and America for architectural 
themes, but to the castle of Nagoya, the watch- 
towers above the moat of the Imperial Palace, the 
palace gates, and the temples and pagodas every- 
where. 

When this time comes the Japanese will also 
realize how very bad are most of the bronze statues 
of statesmen and military leaders throughout the 
world, and how particularly bad are their own ad- 
ventures in this field of art. 

Until I saw Tokyo I was under the impression 
that the world's worst bronzes were to be found 



28 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

in the region of the Mall in Central Park, New York; 
but there is in Tokyo a statue of a statesman in a 
frock coat, with a silk hat in his hand, which sur- 
passes any other awfulness in bronze that I have 
ever seen. 

Looking at such things one marvels that they 
can be created and tolerated in a land which has 
produced and still produces so much minute loveli- 
ness in pottery, ivory, and wood. How can these 
people, who still know flowing silken draperies, 
endure to see their heroes cast in Prince Albert 
coats and pantaloons? And how can they adopt 
the European style of statuary, when in so many 
places they have but to look at the roadside to see 
an ancient monument consisting of a single gigantic 
stone with unhewn edges and a flat face embeUished 
only with an inscription — simple, dignified, im- 
pressive. 

All nations, however, have their periods of inno- 
vation-worship, and if Japan has sometimes erred in 
her selections, her excuse is a good one. She did not 
take up Western ways because she wanted to. She 
wished to remain a hermit nation. She asked of the 
world nothing more than that it leave her alone. 
She even fired on foreign ships to drive them from 
her shores — which, far from accomplishing her pur- 
pose, only cost her a bombardment. Then, in 1853, 
came our Commodore Perry and, as we now politely 
phrase it, "knocked at Japan's door." To the 
Japanese this "knocking" backed by a fleet of 
"big black ships," had a loud and ominous sound. 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 29 

The more astute of their statesmen saw that the 
siumnons was not to be ignored. Japan must 
become a part of the world, and if she would save 
herself from the world's rapacity she must quickly 
learn to play the world's game. Fourteen years 
after Perry's visit the Shogunate, which for seven 
centuries had suppressed the Imperial family, and 
itself ruled the land, feU, and the late Emperor, 
now known as Meiji Tenno — ^meaning "Emperor of 
Enlightenment " — came from his former capital in the 
lovely old city of Kyoto, the Boston of Japan, and 
took up the reins of government in Yedo — later re- 
named Tokyo, or "Eastern Capital" — occupying the 
former Shogun's palace which is the Imperial res- 
idence to day. 

The Meiji Era will doubtless go down as the 
greatest of all eras in Japanese history, and as one 
of the greatest eras in the history of any nation. 
To Viscount Kaneko, who is in charge of the work 
of preparing the official record of the reign for pub- 
hcation. President Roosevelt wrote his opinion of 
what such a book should be. 

"No other emperor in history," he declared, 
"saw his people pass through as extraordinary a 
transformation, and the account of the Emperor's 
part in this transformation, of his own life, of the 
public hves of his great statesmen who were his 
servants and of the people over whom he ruled, 
would be a work that would be a model for all time." 

Under the Emperor Meiji, Japan made breathless 
haste to westernize herself, for she was determined 



30 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

to save herself from falling under foreign domination. 
Small wonder, then, if in her haste she snatched 
blindly at any innovation from abroad. Small 
wonder if she sometimes snatched the wrong thing. 
Small wonder if she sometimes does it to this day. 
For she is still a nation in a state of flux; you seem 
to feel her changing under your very feet. 

But because Japan has accepted a thing it does 
not mean that she has accepted it for ever. In 
great affairs and small, her history illustrates this 
fact. A case in point is the story of European dress. 

More than thirty years ago, when the craze 
for everything foreign was at its height, when the 
whole fabric of social life in the upper world was in 
process of radical change, European dress became 
fashionable not only for men but for women. When 
great ladies had worn it for a time their humbler 
sisters took it up, and one might have thought that 
the national costume, which is so charming, was 
destined entirely to disappear. 

Men attached to government offices, banks, and 
institutions tending to the European style in the con- 
struction and equipment of their buildings, had some 
excuse for the change, since the fine silks of Japan 
do not wear so well as tough woollen fabrics, and 
the loose sleeves tend to catch on door-knobs and 
other projections not to be found in the Japanese 
style of building. 

But in Japan more than in any other country, 
"woman's place is in the home," and just as the 
Japanese costume is not well suited to the European 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 31 

style of building, so the European costume is not 
well suited to the Japanese house and its customs. 
For in the Japanese house instead of sitting on a 
chair one squats upon a cushion, and corsets, stock- 
ings and tight skirts were not designed to squat in. 
Equally important, clogs and shoes are left outside 
the door of the Japanese house in winter and summer, 
and as in the winter the house is often very cold, 
having no cellar and only small braziers, called 
hibachi, to give warmth, the covering afforded the 
feet by the skirts of a Japanese costume is very 
comforting. Moreover, the Japanese themselves 
declare that European dress is not becoming to their 
women, being neither suited to their figures nor 
to the little pigeon-toed shuffle which is so fetching 
beneath the skirts of a kimono. 

What was the result of all this? 

The men who found foreign dress useful continued 
to wear it for business, although those who could 
afford to do so kept a Japanese wardrobe as well. 
But the women, to whom European dress was only 
an encumbrance, discarded it completely, so that 
to-day no sight is rarer in Japan than that of a 
Japanese woman dressed in other than the native 
costume. 

If a Japanese lady be cursed with atrocious 
taste, there is practically no way to find it out, 
no matter how much money she may spend 
on personal adornment. The worst that she 
may do is to carry her clothes less prettily than 
other women of her class. The lines she cannot 



32 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

change. The fabrics are prescribed. The colours 
are restricted in accordance with her age. Her 
dress, hke ahnost every other detail of her daily 
life, is regulated by a rigid code. If she be middle- 
aged and fat she cannot make herself absurd by 
dressing as a debutante. If she be thin she cannot 
wear an evening gown cut down in back to show 
a spinal column like a string of wooden beads. Nor 
can she spend a fortune upon earrings, bracelets, 
necklaces. She may have some pretty ornamental 
combs for her black lacquer hair, a bar pin for her 
obi, a watch, and perhaps, if she be very much 
Americanized, a ring and a mesh bag. A hair- 
dresser she must have, both to accomplish that 
amazing and effective coif she wears, and to tell 
her all the latest gossip (for in Japan, as elsewhere, 
the hairdresser is famed as a medium for the trans- 
mission of spicy items which ought not to be trans- 
mitted) ; but her pocketbook is free from the assaults 
of milliners; hats she has none; only a draped hood 
when the cold weather comes. 

The feminine costume is regulated by three things : 
first, by the age of the wearer; second, by the season; 
third, by the requirements of the occasion. The 
brightest colours are worn by children; the best 
kimonos of children of prosperous families are of 
silk in briUiant flowered patterns. Their pendant 
sleeves are very long. Young unmarried women 
also wear bright colours and sleeves a yard in length. 
But the young wife, though not denied the use of 
colour, uses it more sparingly and in shades rela- 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 33 

tively subdued; and the pocket-like pendants of 
her sleeves are but half the length of those of her 
younger unmarried sister. The older she grows 
the shorter the sleeve pendants become, and the 
darker and plainer grows her dress. 

In hot weather a kimono of light silk, often white 
with a coloured pattern, is worn by well-dressed 
women. Beneath this there will be another Hght 
kimono which is considered underwear — though 
other underwear is worn beneath it. Japanese 
underwear is not at all like ours, but one notices 
that many gentlemen in the national costume adopt 
the Occidental flannel undershirt, wearing it be- 
neath their silks when the weather is cold — a fact 
revealed by a glimpse of the useful but unlovely 
garment rising up into the V-shaped opening formed 
by the collar of the kimono where it folds over at 
the throat. 

As with us, the temperature is not the thing that 
marks the time for changing from the attire of one 
season to that of another. Summer arrives on 
June first, whatever the weather may be. On that 
date the Tokyo policeman blossoms out in white 
trousers and a white cap, and on June fifteenth 
he confirms the arrival of summer by changing his 
blue coat for a white one. So with ladies of fashion. 
Their summer is from June first to September 
thirtieth; their autumn from October first to Nov- 
ember thirtieth; their winter from December first 
to March thirty-first; their spring from April first 
to May thirty-first. In spring the brightest colours 



34 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

are worn. Those for autumn and winter are gener- 
ally more subdued. 

Young ladies wear brilliant kimonos for ceremonial 
dress, but ceremonial dress for married women 
consists of three kimonos, the outer one of black, 
though those beneath, revealed only where they 
show a V-shaped margin at the neck, may be of 
lighter coloured silk. On the exterior kimono the 
family crest — some emblem generally circular in 
form, such as a conventionalized flower or leaf 
design, about an inch in diameter — appears five 
times in white: on the breast at either side, on the 
back of either sleeve at a point near the elbow, and 
at the centre of the back, between the shoulder- 
blades. Because of these crests the goods from 
which the kimono is made have to be dyed to order, 
the crests being blocked out in wax on the original 
white silk so that the dye fails to penetrate. Even 
the under-kimonos of fashionable ladies will have 
crests made in this way. 

With the kimono a Japanese lady always wears 
a neck-piece called an eri (pronounced "airy"), a 
long straight band revealed in a narrow V-shaped 
margin inside the neck of the inner kimono. The 
eri varies in colour, material, and design according 
to the wearer's age, the occasion and the season, 
and it may be remarked that embroidered or sten- 
cilled eri in bright colourings make attractive sou- 
venirs to be brought home as gifts to ladies, who can 
wear them as belts or as bands for summer hats. 

If the weather be cold the haori, an interlined silk 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 35 

coat hanging to the knees or a Httle below, is worn 
over the kimono. This is black, with crests, or of 
some solid colour, not too gay. A young lady's 
haori is sometimes made of flowered silk. Men also 
wear the haori, but the man's haori is always, black; 
sind while a man will wear a crested haori on the 
most formal occasions, a woman en grande tenue will 
avoid wearing hers whenever possible for the reason 
that it conceals all but a tiny portion of the article 
of raiment which is her chief pride: namely the sash 
or obi. 

The best obi of a fashionable woman consists 
of a strip of heavy brocaded or hand-embroidered 
silk, folded lengthwise and sewn at the edges making 
a stiff double band about thirteen inches wide and 
three and one third yards long. This is wrapped 
twice around the waist and tied in a large flat knot 
in back, the mode of tying varying in accordance 
with the age of the wearer, and differing somewhat 
in divers localities. The average cost of a fine new 
obi is, I beheve, about two hundred dollars, and I 
have heard of obi costing as much as a thousand 
doUars. Some of the less expensive ones are very 
pretty also, and many a poor woman will have as her 
chief treasure an obi worth forty or fifty dollars 
which she will wear only on great occasions, with her 
best silk kimono. 

A Tokyo lady notable for the invariable loveliness 
of her costumes gives me the following information 
in response to an inquiry as to the cost of dressing. 

"As our style never changes," she writes, "we 



36 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

don't have to buy new dresses every season, as our 
American sisters do. When a girl marries, her parents 
supply her, according to their means, with complete 
costumes for all seasons. Sometimes these sets wiU 
include several hundred kimonos, and they may cost 
anywhere from two thousand to twenty thousand 
yen. [A yen is about equal to half a dollar.] 

"So if a girl is well fitted out she need not spend a 
great deal on dress after her marriage. A couple 
of hundred yen may represent her whole year's 
outlay for dress, though of course if she is rich 
and cares a great deal for dress, she may spend several 
thousand. 

"Our fashions vary only in colour and such figures 
as may be displayed in the goods. Therefore they 
are not nearly so 'busy' as your fashions. And 
we can always rip a kimono to pieces, dye it, and 
make it over." 

Some other items I get from this lady: When a 
Japanese girl is married it is customary for the bride's 
family to present obi to the ladies of the groom's 
family. For a funeral the entire costume including 
the obi, is black, save for the white crests. Ladies 
of the family of the deceased wear white silk kimonos 
without crests, and white silk obi. The Japanese 
ladies' costume, put on to the best advantage, is not 
so comfortable as it looks. It is fitted as tight 
as possible over the chest, to give a flat appearance, 
and is also bound tight at the waist to hold it in 
position. The obi, moreover, is very stiff, and to 
look well must also be tight. 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 37 

The more select geisha are said to attain the great- 
est perfection of style; which probably means merely 
that, being professional entertainers whose sole 
business it is to please men, they make more of 
a study of dress, and spend more time before their 
mirrors than other women do. 

The speed with which women reverted to the 
lovely kimono after their brief experiment with 
foreign fashions, may have been due in part to a 
lurking fear in Japanese male minds that along 
with the costume their women might adopt per- 
nicious foreign ways, becoming aggressive and in- 
tractable, like American women who, according 
to the Japanese idea, are spoiled by their men — 
precisely as, according to our idea, Japanese men 
are spoiled by their women. 

But whatever the reasons, the fact remains that 
the Japanese revealed good practical judgment. 
They kept what they needed and discarded the 
rest. It is their avowed purpose to follow this rule 
in all situations involving the acceptance or rejection 
of western innovations, their object being to preserve 
the national customs wherever these do not conflict 
with the requirements of the hideous urge we are 
pleased to term "modern progress." This is a 
good rule to follow, and if we but knew the story 
of the period when Chinese civilization was brought 
to Japan, nearly fourteen centuries ago, we might 
perhaps find interesting paraflels between the two 
eras of change. 



CHAPTER IV 

Quakes and the Building Problem— Big Quakes — Democracy 
in Architecture — Narrow Streets and Tiny Shops — The Ma- 
jestic Little Policeman — The Dread of Burglars — What to 
Do in a Quake— The Man Who Went Home— ''Fire!''— A 
Ricksha Ride to the Wrong Address — A Front-Porch Bath 



H 



AVE I given the impression that Tokyo is 
a disappointing city to one in search of 
things purely Japanese? If so it was be- 
cause I tarried too long in the district of railroad 
stations and big business. Moreover, to the prac- 
tical commercial eye, this portion of the city must 
look promising indeed, because of the wide streets 
and the new building going on. And it is building 
of a kind to be approved by the man of conamerce, 
for in her new edifices Tokyo is adopting steel- 
frame construction. 

That she is only now beginning to build in this 
way is not due to inertia, but to the fact that earth- 
quakes complicate her building problem. The tallest 
of her present office buildings is, I believe, but seven 
stories high, and I have heard that twice as much 
steel was employed in its construction as would 
have been employed in a similar building where 
earthquakes did not enter into the calculations 
of the architect. 

38 




The Japanese is not a slave to his possessions. The average 
family can move its household goods in a hand-cart (Above) 

Sawing and planing are accomplished with a pulling instead 
of a driving motion (Below) 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 39 

It would be difficult to overestimate the part 
that earthquakes play in establishing the character 
of Japanese cities. There will never be skyscrapers 
in Japan, or apartment buildings with families 
piled high in air. The family, not the individual, 
is the social unit of the land, and the private house 
is the symbol of the family. Even in the congested 
slums of Japanese cities, or in the quarters given 
over to the pitiful outcast class called eta, each 
family has its house, though the house may consist 
only of a single room no larger than a woodshed 
and may harbour an appalling number of people, 
as miserable and as crowded as those of the poorest 
slums in the United States. 

Though the seismograph records an average of 
about fom* earthquakes a day, most of the shocks 
are too slight to be felt. Tokyo is however, con- 
scious of about fifty shocks a year. But she has 
not had a destructive earthquake since 1894, nor a 
great disaster since 1855, when most of the city was 
shaken down or burned, and 100,000 persons perished. 

Minor shocks receive but little attention. In 
fact by many they are regarded with favour, on 
the assumption that they tend to reduce pressure 
in the boiler-room, preventing savage visitations. 
However, these do occasionally occur and on the 
seacoast they are sometimes accompanied by tidal 
waves which ravage long stretches of shore, wiping 
out towns and villages. 

Earthquake shocks are sometimes accompanied 
by terrifying subterranean sounds. Scientists have 



40 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

their ways of accounting for all these things, but 
the man who really knows is the old peasant of the 
seacoast village. He can tell you what really 
causes the earth to tremble. It is the wrigglings 
of a pair of giant fish called Namazu, whiskered 
creatures somewhat resembling catfish, which in- 
habit the bowels of the earth and support upon 
their backs the Islands of Japan. 

Even though the quakes are slight, they serve 
to keep in people's minds certain unpleasant possi- 
bilities; and these possibilities are, as I have said, 
aclaiowledged in the structure of Japanese houses. 
Two stories is the maximum height for a residence, 
and even tea-houses and hotels are seldom more than 
three stories high. This, together with the fact that 
everyone who can afford it has a garden, causes 
Japanese cities to spread enormously. 

On the other hand, the Japanese requires fewer 
rooms than we do; his home hfe is simple and he is 
less a slave to his possessions than any other civilized 
human being. The average family can move its 
household goods in a hand-cart. Even the houses of 
the rich are not blatant except in a few cases in which 
florid European architecture has been attempted. 
The difference between the houses of the rich and 
of the poor is in degree, not in kind. As with the 
Japanese costume, the essential lines do not vary. 

This democracy in architecture is restful to the 
eye and to the senses. It gives the streets of Tokyo 
— excepting the important thoroughfares — a sort 
of small-town look. Nor is a great metropolis 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 41 

suggested by the old narrow streets, with their 
bazaar-like open shop fronts, their banner-like 
awnings of blue and white, and their colourful dis- 
plays of fish, fresh vegetables, fruits, wooden clogs, 
curios, and many other objects less definable, the 
possible uses of which entice the alien wayfarer 
to speculation or investigation. 

I never got enough of prowling in the narrow 
streets of Tokyo, staring into shops (and sometimes, 
I fear, into houses), watching various artisans carrying 
on home industries, wondering what were the legends 
displayed in Chinese characters on awnings, banners 
and lacquered signs ; stumbling now upon an ancient 
wayside shrine, now upon a shop full of "two-and-a- 
half-puff" pipes," tobacco pouches for the male and 
female users of such pipes, and netsuke (large buttons 
for attaching pipe-cases and pouches to the sash) 
carved in delightfully fantastic forms; now upon 
a tea-shop full of tall coloured earthenware m-ns, 
shaped like the amphorae of ancient Rome and 
marked with baffling black ideographs. Now I 
would discover a tea-house on the brink of a stream, 
its balconies abloom with little geisha, its portals 
protected from impurity by three small piles of salt; 
now it would be a geisha quarter I was in, and I 
would hear the drum and flute and samisen; or 
again I would discover a little shop with Japanese 
prints for sale, and would enter and drink green 
tea with the silk-robed proprietor, bagging the knees 
of my trousers and cramping my legs by squatting 
for an hour to look at his wares. 



42 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

Heavy wheeled traffic was not contemplated 
when the narrow streets of Tokyo were laid out. 
From the most attenuated of them, automobiles 
and carriages are automatically excluded by their 
size, while from others they are excluded by the 
policeman who inhabits the white kiosk on the 
corner. The policeman has discretionary power, 
and if you have good reason for wishing to drive 
down a narrow street he will sometimes let you do 
so, granting the permission coldly. He is a majestic 
httle figure. He wears a sword and is treated as a 
personage. 

Naturally, the first consideration in the construc- 
tion of a Japanese house is flexibility. In an earth- 
quake a house should sway. Earthquakes are thus 
responsible for the general use of wood, which is in 
turn responsible for the frequency of fires. And 
next to earthquakes, fires are regarded by the 
Japanese as their greatest menace. 

Third on the list of things feared and abhorred 
comes the burglar. I doubt that there are more 
burglars in Japan than elsewhere, or that the Japan- 
ese burglar is more murderous than the average gen- 
tleman of his profession in other lands, but for some 
reason he is more thought about. This may be be- 
cause of the vicious knife he carries, or it may be 
because Japanese houses are so easy to get into. In 
the daytime one would only have to push a hand 
through the paper shoji and undo the catch — ^which 
is about as strong as a hairpin. At night one might 
need a cigar-box opener. At all events, it is for fear 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 43 

of burglars that the Japanese householder barricades 
himself, after dark, behind a layer of unperforated 
wooden shutters, which are slid into place in grooves 
outside those in which the shoji slide. If the shut- 
ters keep out burglars they also keep out air; and 
even though you may be willing to risk the entrance 
of the former with the latter, the police will not 
permit you to leave your shutters open — not if 
they catch you at it. 

I made some inquiries as to the course to be pur- 
sued in the event of burglaiy, fire, or severe earth- 
quakes. 

In earthquakes people act differently. I asked 
our maid, Yuki, what she did, and found that, when 
in a foreign-style house, she would crouch beside a 
wardrobe or other heavy piece of furniture which she 
thought would protect her if the ceiling should come 
down. 

"But what if the wardrobe should faU over on 
you.^^" I asked. 

Yuki, however, was not planning for that kind of 
an earthquake. 

In a Japanese house one need not worry about the 
ceiling, as it is of wood; and as a matter of fact most 
of the ceilings in foreign-style houses are of sheet 
metal. 

It seems to me that the most intelligent thing to 
do in an earthquake is to stand in the arch of a door- 
way; certainly it is a bad plan to try to run out of 
the house, as many people, attempting that, have 
been killed by falling fragments. 



44 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

One night I got a letter from a friend at home. 
* * Try to be in a httle earthquake, ' ' he wrote. * * They 
build their houses for them, don't they?" 

In the middle of that same night a Httle earth- 
quake came, as though on invitation. The bed- 
springs swung; the doors and windows rattled. 

At breakfast next morning I asked my hostess, 
an American lady who has lived most of her life in 
Japan, whether she had felt the tremor. 

"I always feel them," she said. "They bother 
me more and more. In the last few years I have 
got into the habit of waking up a minute or two 
before the shocks begin." 

"What do you do then?" I asked. 

"I lie still," she said, "until the shaking stops. 
Then I wake my husband and scold him." 

The husband of this lady told me of a man he 
knew, an American, who came out to Japan some 
years ago on business, intending to stay for a con- 
siderable time. On landing in Yokohama he went 
directly to the office of the company with which 
he was connected, and had hardly stepped in when 
the city was violently shaken. 

By the time the shocks were over he had changed 
all his plans. 

"Nothing could induce me to stay in a country 
where this sort of things goes on," he said. "I 
shall take the next boat back to San Francisco." 

He did — and arrived just in time for the great 
San Francisco quake. 

The course to take in case of fire is the same the 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 45 

world over. Shout "Fire!" in the language of the 
country and try to put the fire out. 

But if you find a burglar in your room don't 
shout the Japanese word for "burglars," even if 
you know it — ^which I do not. The thing to shout 
is "Fire!" — so I am advised by a Japanese friend, 
who, I am sure, has my best interests at heart. 
For if you shout "Fire!" in the middle of the night, 
the neighbours, fearing that the fire will spread 
to their own houses, rush to your assistance; whereas 
if you cry ' ' Burglars ! " it merely gives them gooseflesh 
as they lie abed. 

Many times it happened in Tokyo that when I 
was bound on a definite errand somewhere, the 
chauffeur or the ricksha coolie would land me miles 
from my intended destination. There are three 
reasons why this happened so often. First, Tokyo 
is a very difficult place in which to find one's way 
about. Second, addresses in Tokyo are not always 
given by street number, but by wards and districts, 
and there are tricks about some addresses, as, for 
instance, the fact that 22 Shiba Park isn't on Shiba 
Park at all, but is a block or two distant from the 
park's margin. And third, though the language in 
which I told the chauffeur or the kurumaya where 
to go, was offered in good faith as Japanese, it was 
nine times out of ten not Japanese, but a dead lan- 
guage — a language that was dead because I myself 
had murdered it. 

In some other city I might have felt annoyance 
over being delivered at the wrong address. But in 



46 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

Tokyo I never really cared where I was going, I 
found it all so charming. 

Once a kurumaya trotted with me for three hours 
around the city to reach a place he should have 
reached in one. I knew I would be hours late for 
my appointment. I knew I ought to fret. But 
did I.^^ No! Because of all the things that I was 
seeing. 

I saw the bean-curd man jogging along the street 
with a long rod over his shoulder, at each end of 
which was suspended a box of tofu, which he an- 
nounced at intervals by a blast on a little brass 
horn : ' ' Ta — ta : teey a ; tee-e-e — ta ! " I saw a thicket 
of bamboo. I saw a diminutive farmhouse, with 
mud walls and a deep straw thatch, and in the door- 
way was a bent old white-haired woman seated at a 
wooden loom, weaving plaid silk. And behind the 
bamboo fence and the flowering hedge, stood a 
cherry tree in blossom. 

It began to rain. In any other land I might have 
felt annoyance over so much rain as we were having. 
But not so in Japan. Japan could not look gloomy 
if it tried. Rain makes the landscape greener and 
the flowers fresher. It makes the coolies put on 
bristUng capes of straw which shed the water as a 
bird's feathers do, and transform the wearer into 
a gigantic yellow porcupine. It makes the people 
leave off the little cotton shoes, called tabi, and go 
barefoot in their clogs. It makes them change 
their usual clogs for tall ones hfted up on four-inch 
stilts; and these as they scrape along the pavement 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN . 47 

give off a musical "clotch-clotch," which is some- 
times cm'iously tuned in two keys, one for either 
foot. It brings out huge coloured Japanese umbrel- 
las of bamboo and oiled paper, with black bull's- 
eyes at their centres, and a halo of little points 
around their outside edges. And as you go splashing 
by them with your kurumaya ringing his little bell, 
the women turn their great umbrellas sidewise, 
resting the margins of them in the road to keep 
their kimonos from being splattered. And even 
then they do not look at you severely. They 
understand that you can't help it. And are you 
'not, moreover, that lordly creature, Man, whereas 
they are merely women? 

All these things I saw while I was lost, that 
afternoon. Then, just when I might have begun 
to wonder if I was ever going to reach my destina- 
tion, what did I see? 

Under the eaves of a thatched house beside the 
way a bronze young mother and three children, 
aU innocent of clothing and self-consciousness, 
preparing to get into a great wooden barrel of a 
bathtub. You never saw a sweeter family picture! 
. . . Yes, the Japanese are peculiarly a clean 
race. It is not merely hearsay. It is a front- 
porch fact. 

Could any man lose patience with a kurumaya 
who can get him lost and make him like it? 



CHAPTER V 

Reversed Ideas — Some Advantages of Old Age — Morbidity 
and Suicide— High Necks and Long Skirts — Language — 
— Chinese Characters and Kana — Calligraphy as a Fine 
Art — The Oriental Mind — False Hair — The Mystery of the 
Bamboo Screens — A Note on Cats at Cripple Creek — The 
Occidental Mind 

ON THE day of my arrival in Japan I started 
a list of things which according to our ideas 
the Japanese do backwards — or which ac- 
cording to their ideas we do backwards. I sup- 
pose that every traveller in Japan has kept some 
such record. My list, beginning with the observa- 
tion that their books commence at what we call 
the back, that the lines of type run down the page 
instead of across, and that " f oot-tiotes " are printed 
at the top of the page, soon grew to consider- 
able proportions. Almost every day I had been 
able to add an item or two, and every time I did 
so I found myself playing with the fancy that such 
contrarieties ought in some way to be associated 
with the fact that we stand foot-to-foot with the 
Japanese upon the globe. 

The Japanese method of beckoning would, to us, 
signify "go away " ; boats are beached stern foremost; 
horses are backed into their stalls; sawing and 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 49 

planing are accomplished with a pulling instead of a 
driving motion; keys turn in their locks in a reverse 
direction from that customary with us. In the 
Japanese game of Go, played on a sort of checker- 
board, the pieces are placed not within the squares 
but over the points of Hnear intersection. During 
the day Japanese houses, with their sHding walls 
of wood and paper, are wide open, but at night 
they are enclosed with solid board shutters and 
people sleep practically without ventilation. At 
the door of a theatre or a restaurant the Japanese 
check their shoes instead of their hats; their sweets, 
if they come at all, are served early in the meal 
instead of toward the end ; men do their sake drinking 
before rather than after the meal, and instead of 
icing the national beverage they heat it in a kettle. 
Action in the theatre is modelled not on life but on 
the movements of dolls in marionette shows, and 
in the classic No drama the possibility of showing 
emotion by facial expression is eliminated by the 
use of carved wooden masks. 

Instead of slipping her thread through the eye 
of her needle a Japanese woman slips the eye of her 
needle over the point of her thread; she reckons 
her child one year old on the day it is born and two 
years old on the following New Year's Day. Thus, 
when an American child born on December thirty- 
first is counted one day old, a Japanese child born 
on the same day is counted two years old. 

Once when I was dining at the house of a Japanese 
family who had resided for years in New York, 



50 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

their little daughter came into the room. Hearing 
her speaking English, I asked: 

*'How old are you?" 

"Five and six," she answered. Then she added, 
by way of explanation, that five was her "American 
age" and six her "Japanese age." 

Old age is accepted gracefully in Japan, and is, 
moreover, highly honoured. Often you will find men 
and women actually looking forward to their declin- 
ing years, knowing that they will be kindly and re- 
spectfully treated and that their material needs will 
be looked after by their families. Old gentlemen 
and ladies are pleased at being called grandfather 
and grandmother — o-ji-san and oba san — by those 
who know them well, and elderly unmarried women 
hke similarly to be called oba san — aunt. The same 
terms are also used in speaking to aged servants 
and peasants whom one does not know, but to whom 
one wishes to show amiability. 

The duty of the younger to the older members 
of a family does not stop with near relatives, but 
includes remote ones, wherefore poorhouses have 
until quite recently been considered unnecessary. 

It seems to me that one of the most striking 
differences between the two nations is revealed in 
the attitude of Japanese school and college boys. 
Instead of killing themselves at play — at football 
and in automobile accidents — as is the way of our 
student class, Japanese boys not infrequently under- 
mine their health by overstudy, and now and then 
one hears that a student, having failed to pass his 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 51 

examinations, has thrown himself over the Falls of 
Kegon at Nikko. Undoubtedly there is a morbid 
strain in the Japanese nature. Translations of the 
works of unwholesome European authors have a large 
sale in Japan, and suicides are by no means con- 
fined to the student class. Poisoning, and plunging 
before an oncoming locomotive are favourite methods 
of self-destruction. Once when I was riding on an 
express train I felt the emergency brakes go on 
suddenly. A moment after we had stopped I saw 
a woman running rapidly away on a banked path 
between two flooded rice-fields with a couple of 
trainmen in pursuit. They caught her, but after 
a few minutes' agitated talk during which they shook 
her by the sleeves as though for emphasis, let her 
go. We were told that the engineman had seen 
her sitting on the track. Two or three days later 
I read in a newspaper that a woman had committed 
suicide beneath a train at about the place where I 
witnessed this episode. Her husband, the paper 
said, had deserted her. I suppose it was the same 
woman. 

Another curious inversion is to be found in the 
Japanese point of view concerning woman's dress — 
and undress. I have been told that our style 
of evening gown, revealing shoulders, arms and 
ankles (to state the matter mildly), does not strike 
the Japanese as modest. Certainly the mandate 
of the Japanese Imperial Court is not the same as 
that of the French modiste (how curiously and in- 
appropriately the word suggests our word "mod- 



52 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

dest'M) for whereas, at the time of writing, the latter 
decrees skirts of hardly more than knee length, the 
former decrees, for ladies being presented at court, 
skirts that touch the ground. Considering the fore- 
going facts it is, however, somewhat perplexing to 
the Occidental mind to find that men and women 
often dress and undress, in Japanese inns, with their 
bedroom shoji wide open, and that furthermore they 
meet in the bath without, apparently, the least em- 
barrassment. 

Like the English, the Japanese are persistent 
bathers, but whereas the English take cold baths 
the Japanese bathe in water so hot that we could 
hardly stand it. And when they have bathed 
they dry themselves with a small, damp towel, 
which they use as a sort of mop. 

Also like the English they drive to the left of the 
road. There is much to be said for that, but some 
of their other customs of the road surprise one. 
Wherever they have not been "civihzed" out of 
their native courtesy you will find that one chauffeur 
dislikes to overtake and pass another. Surely to 
an American this is an inversion! When a pro- 
cession of automobiles is going along a road and 
one of them is for some reason required to stop, 
the cars which follow do not blow their horns and 
dash by in delight and a cloud of dust, but draw up 
behind the stationary car; and if it becomes neces- 
sary for them to go on, the chauffeurs who do so 
apologize for passing. This custom, which is dying 
out, comes, I fancy, from that of ricksha-men, 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 53 

who never overtake and pass each other on the road, 
but always fall in behind the slowest runner, getting 
their pace from him, protecting him against the 
complaints which his passenger would make if 
others were continually coming up behind and 
going by. 

Of all differences, however, none is more pro- 
nounced than that of language. Instead of a sim- 
ple alphabet like ours, the fairly educated Japan- 
ese must know two or three thousand Chinese 
ideographs, and a highly cultivated person will 
know several thousand more. To be sure, there 
is a simple way of writing by a phonetic system, 
not imlike shorthand, which is called kana. Every 
Japanese can read kana, which is sometimes also 
mastered by foreigners long resident in Japan. 
There are but forty-eight characters in kana, and 
as thje characters have in themselves no meaniag, 
but signify only a set of sounds, they can be used 
to write English names as well as Japanese words. 
My own name is written in kana characters hav- 
ing the following soimds: Su-id-rii-fo — ^which being 
spoken in swift succession produce a sound not un- 
like "Street." 

The Chinese ideographs used by the Japanese 
have the same forms as the characters used in 
China, but are pronounced in an entirely differ- 
ent way, so that the Japanese and Chinese can 
read each other's writing, yet cannot talk together. 
Books and newspapers published in Japan are 



54 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

printed in a mixture of Chinese characters and 
kana, and there is, moreover, beside each Chinese 
character in newspapers a tiny hne of kana giving 




su 



to 



ri 

a character denot- 
ing that the pre- 
ceding syllable is 
long 



to 



Dono or Esquire — 
a Chinese character 



the sound of the word represented. In this way a 
reader of newspapers gets continual instruction in 
the written language and finally comes to know the 
most frequently used words from the ideographs, 
without referring to the kana interpretation. Thus 
there are actually two ways of reading a Japanese 
paper. A thoroughly educated man reads the ideo- 
graphs, while a poorly educated one reads the kana, 




The bath of the proletariat consists of a large barrel with a 
charcoal stove attached. Frequently it stands out of doors 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 55 

which gives him the sound of a word that he knows 
by ear, though he does not know it by sight when it 
is written in the classic character. These conditions, 
of course, eliminate the use of our sort of typewriter, 
though there is an extremely complicated and slow 
Japanese typewriter which is used chiefly where 
carbon copies are required. Also, they render the 
use of the linotype impracticable, and make hand- 
typesetting an extremely complicated trade. The 
difficulty of learning the Chinese characters, more- 
over, makes it necessary for students to remain in 
school and college several years longer than is the case 
with us. There is a movement on foot to Romanize 
the Japanese language, just as in this country there 
is a movement to adopt the metric system; but prac- 
tical though such improvements would be in both 
cases, the realization of them is, I fear, far distant, 
because of the difficulties involved in making the 
change. And, indeed, from the standpoint of pict- 
uresqueness, I should be sorry to see the Chinese 
characters discarded, for they are fascinating not only 
in form but by reason of the very fact that we never, 
by any chance, know what they mean. 

The Japanese write with a brush dipped in water 
and rubbed on a stick of India-ink; they seem to 
push the brush, writing with little jabs, instead of 
drawing it after the hand, even though they write 
down the column. Calligraphy is with them a fine 
art; and beautiful brushwork, such as we look for in a 
masterly painting, is a mark of cultivation. Because 
of their drilling with the brush almost all educated 



56 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

Japanese can draw pictures. Short poems and 
aphorisms written in large characters by famous 
men are mounted on gold mats and hung like paint- 
ings in the homes of those so fortunate as to possess 
them. A scription from the hand of General Count 
Nogi or Prince Ito would be treasured by a Japanese 
as we would treasure one from the hand of Lincoln 
or Roosevelt — possibly even more so, for where a 
letter from one of our great men has a sentimental 
and historical value, a piece of writing from one 
of their great men has these values plus the merit 
of being a work of art. Such bits of writing bring 
large prices when put up at auction, and forgeries 
are not unconunon. 

In its structure the Japanese language is the anti- 
thesis of ours. Lafcadio Heam declares that no 
adult Occidental can perfectly master it. "Could 
you learn all the words in the Japanese dictionary," 
he writes, "your acquisition would not help you 
in the least to make yourself understood in speaking, 
unless you learned also to think like a Japanese — 
that is to say, to think backward, to think upside 
down and inside out, to think in directions totally 
foreign to Aryan habit." 

The simplest English sentence translated word for 
word into Japanese would be meaningless, and the 
simplest Japanese sentence, translated into Eng- 
Ush, equally so. To illustrate, I choose at random 
from my phrase book: "Please write the address in 
Japanese." The translation is given as: Doka Nihon 
no moji de tokoro wo kaite kudasat But that sentence 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 57 

translated back into English, word for word, gives 
this result: "Of beseeching Japan of words with a 
place write please." And there is one word, wo, 
which is untranslatable, being a particle which, 
following the word tokoro, "a place," indicates it 
as the object of the verb. 

I shall mention but one more inversion. The 
Japanese use no profanity. If they wish to be 
insulting or abusive they omit the customary 
honorifics from their speech, or else go to the 
opposite extreme, inserting honorifics in a manner 
so elaborate as to convey derision. 

Numerous and curious though these reversals be, 
they are but the merest surface ripples upon the 
deep, dark, pool of Japanese thought and custom. 

At first I did not quite grasp this fact. In my 
early days in Japan, when I was asking questions 
about everything, it sometimes looked to me as 
if the average Japanese was constitutionally un- 
able to give a direct and simple answer to a direct 
and simple question, and my first impression was 
that this was due to some peculiarity of the far- 
famed Oriental Mind. But that impression soon 
changed — so much so that I am now disposed to 
doubt that such a thing as the Oriental Mind exists 
in Japan, if by that term is meant a mental fabric 
constitutionally different from that of Occidental 
peoples. That is to say, I believe the average 
Japanese child starts out in hfe with about the same 
intellectual potentialities as the average American, 



58 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

English, French or ItaHan child, and that differences 
which develop as the child grows older are not 
differences in mental texture, but only in the mental 
pattern produced by environment. My contention 
is not that Japanese brains are never imperfect or 
peculiar, but that their imperfections and peculiari- 
ties are precisely those found everywhere else in the 
world. And the same rule applies, of course, when 
one compares the great intellects of Japan with the 
great intellects of other nations. At bottom we are 
much more of a piece with the Japanese than either 
they or we generally suppose. The differences 
between us, aside from those of colour, size, and phy- 
siognomy, are almost entirely the result of our op- 
posite training and customs and the effect of these 
upon our respective modes of thought. Neither 
nation has a corner on brains nor on the lack of 
them. 

In a hotel in Kobe a lady of my acquaintance 
ordered orange juice for breakfast. The Japanese 
"boy" — ^waiters and stewards are all "boys "in the 
Far East — presently returned to say that there was 
no orange juice to be had that morning. But he 
added that he could bring oranges if she so desired. 

The Oriental Mind.^ Not at all. The Orient 
has no monopoly of stupid waiters. The same 
thing might have happened in our own country or 
another. And that is the test we should apply 
to every incident which we are incKned to attribute 
to some basic mental difference between the Orientals 
and ourselves. 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 59 

Granted the same background, could not this thing 
have happened in an Occidental country? 

Never, in Japan, was I able to answer that test 
question with a final, confident "No." 

Sometimes, however, I thought I was going to be 
able to. 

One day on the Ginza, the chief shopping street of 
Tokyo, I saw a well-dressed young lady strolling 
along the walk with her long, beautiful hair hanging 
down her back, and false hair damgHng from her hand. 
She was evidently returning from the hairdresser's 
where she had been for a shampoo. The situation, 
from my point of view, was precisely as if I had 
seen a similar spectacle on Fifth Avenue. But 
when I spoke about it to Yuki, who besides being our 
maid was our guide, philosopher, and friend, she 
assured me that the yoimg lady was quite within the 
bounds of custom. 

"We Japanese no think it shame to have false 
hair," she said. 

Once I thought I had the Oriental Mind fairly 
cornered, and had I not later chanced to discover 
my mistake I should probably be tliinking so still. 

I was driving in an automobile with a Japanese 
gentleman, a director in a large pharmaceutical 
company. Parenthetically, I may say that he had 
been telling me how, when his company bought 
three hundred thousand hectares of land in Peru, 
for the purpose of raising plants from which some 
of their products are manufactured, the anti- Japanese 
press of the United States took up the story, falsely 



60 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

declaring that here was a great emigration scheme 
backed by the Japanese Government. But that 
is by the way. 

Presently we came to a place where a large building 
was being erected. The framework was already 
standing and was surrounded by screens of split 
bamboo which were attached to the scaffolding. 
Having noticed other buildings similarly screened, 
I asked about the matter. 

"Ah," said the gentleman, "the screens are 
to prevent the people on the streets from seeing what 
is going on inside." 

"But what goes on inside that they ought not 
to see.»^" I asked, mystified. 

My informant gazed at me gravely for a moment 
through his large round spectacles. Then he said, 
as it seemed to me cryptically: "It is not thought 
best for the people to see too much." 

I pondered this answer for a moment, then noted it 
down in my little book, adding the memorandum: 
"The Oriental Mind!" 

Doubtless I should now be making weird deduc- 
tions from that brown-eyed gentleman's explanation 
of the screens, had I not chanced to mention the 
matter to another Japanese with whom I was more 
intimately acquainted. 

"But that is not correct," he said, smiling. "The 
screens are not there to prevent people from seeing in, 
but to prevent things from faUing on their heads as 
they pass by." 

The bamboo screens, in other words, served pre- 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 61 

cisely the protective purpose of the wooden sheds 
we erect over sidewalks before buildings in process 
of construction. The pharmaceutical gentleman 
did not know what they were for, just as we do not 
know the uses of a great many things we see daily 
on the streets of cities in which we live; he was 
anxious to be helpful to me; he did not wish to fail 
to answer any question I might ask him; so he 
guessed, and guessed wrong. But as any reporter 
can tell you, the practice of passing out the results 
of guessing in the guise of accurate information 
is by no means exclusively a Japanese practice. 
Reporters sometimes guess at things themselves, 
but that is not what I mean. I mean that a con- 
scientious reporter now and then finds himself 
deceived by misinformation coming from some source 
he had supposed reliable. 

In writing about American towns and cities I 
have more than once been so deceived. An old 
inhabitant of Colorado told me that the altitude 
of Cripple Creek was so great that cats could not 
live there. Later, however, I learned that cats can 
perfectly well live in Cripple Creek despite the alti- 
tude. Indeed some cats having but little regard 
for the character of their surroundings do live there. 
It is only the more critical cats who cannot stand 
the place. 

Every American knows that he could be asked 
questions about his own country and its ways 
which he could not answer accurately offhand, but 
in a foreign land he expects every resident of that 



62 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

land to be able to explain anything and everything. 
I wonder if the Japanese expect as much of us when 
they question us. 

"Why do you say *Dear me!'?" I once heard a 
Japanese gentleman inquire of an American lady. 
And though the lady explained why she said "Dear 
me!" I doubt that the Japanese gentleman was 
able to understand. I know that I was not. 

Another Japanese who had been in New York 
wished to know why we called a building in which 
there were no flowers "Madison Square Garden,'' 
and why ladies called a certain garment, once 
generally worn by them, a "petticoat," although 
it is distinctly not a coat, but a skirt. 

My answers to these questions were, to put 
it mildly, vague, and I suppose my questioner said 
to himself as he hstened to me: 

"Ah, the Occidental Mind! How curiously it 
works!" 



CHAPTER VI 

Interlocking Ideas — Customs and Symbolism — Simplicity 
versus Complexity — Flower Arrangement — Teaism — The 
Egg-Shaped God — The Feudal Era — Ceremonial Tea — 
Household Decoration — Keys to Japan — The Seven Blind 
Men 

WHEN I had been several weeks in Japan, 
striving continually to gain some compre- 
hension of the people and their ways, I 
began to feel a little bit discouraged. Never had I 
been so fascinated by a foreign land. Never in so 
short a time had I seen and heard so much that was 
new and strange and charming. Yet never had my 
observations been so fragmentary, so puzzling. 
My notebooks made me think of travelling-bags 
packed with unrelated articles of clothing. With 
the stockings belonging to one theme I had, as it 
were, packed the shoes of another. Here was a full 
dress coat; here a pair of overalls. Nothing was 
complete and no two things seemed to match. I 
could help to dress an army of ideas, but I wondered 
if I could fully clothe one. 

I kept asking questions, but frequently the answers 
led me far afield, and were incomplete and unsatis- 
factory. 

63 



64 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

After a time, however, I began to understand 
why a Japanese so often fails to give a simple and 
direct answer to a simple and direct question about 
things Japanese. It is because, in many instances, 
no such answer is possible. Nor is this impossibility 
due to any mental kink in the Japanese of whom 
the question is asked. It is due to the fact that the 
thing asked about is not a simple, self-contained 
unit, but is a minute part of some great mass of 
thought or custom which must be in a general way 
understood before any single detail of it can be 
understood. It is as though you were to ask a 
question about a coloured pebble only to find 
yourself thereby involved with cosmos. 

Japan is a land of customs. Her customs are 
based on principles which are rooted in traditions, 
which in turn frequently rest upon foundations of 
history, religion, superstition, or perhaps a mythology 
involving all three. Thus it often seems that every 
little word and act of a Japanese can be accounted 
for in some curious, complex yet essentially logical 
manner — that every thought in the Japanese mind 
has, so to speak, a genealogy, which, like the genea- 
logy of the Japanese Imperial Family, reaches back 
into the mists of antiquity. Symbohsm, moreover, 
plays an immense part in the daily life of Japan, and 
this fact enormously complicates matters for the 
foreigner who aspires to understand the country 
and the people. These are some of the reasons why 
in an article recently written for a magazine, I called 
Japan "The Isles of Complexities." 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 65 

Yet when I mentioned the title of that article 
to an American friend who has hved for many 
years in Japan, he wrote me that he considered it 
a misnomer. 

"I should call Japan *The Isles of Simplicities,'" 
he declared, "just because hfe there is so different 
from life in our own artificial civilization. I am 
speaking particularly of our false modesty as com- 
pared with the more natural ideas of the Japanese 
concerning natural functions and unnatural emotions 
— or emotions imnaturally excited. If you wiU get 
down to fundamentals I think you will find that we 
are the complex people and they the simple people. 
Can you, for instance, project yourself into the mind 
of a Martian visiting this earth for the first time, 
taking a trip through the dance-halls, cabarets, and 
midnight frohcs of New York and Chicago, then 
going to Japan and seeing the class of entertainment 
there provided for natives and foreigners alike? 
Let such an unprejudiced outsider watch the street 
scenes of Japan, note the frank customs of the people, 
including those revealed in the community baths, 
and I think he would say the Japanese are essentially 
simple as compared with us, that they are purer 
in thought and action, and (though I know I am 
inviting contradiction) that they have on the average 
a higher sense of real moraHty." 

My friend makes out a good case and I agree 
with much that he says, but he is thinking along on€ 
line while I am thinking along another. He is 
thinking of the outward simplicities of Japanese 



66 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

life, while I am thinking of its inward complexities, 
especially with regard to the relation of one fact to 
another — I might almost say of every fact to every 
other fact. 

Let me illustrate: 

That grouping of flowers in a bamboo vase, which 
you find so satisfying, is not the result of any fancy 
of the moment, but is the product of an elaborate 
art, dating back at least five centuries. Flower 
Arrangement is a part of the curriculum of girls' 
schools and is one of the accomplishments of every 
lady. Hundreds of books have been written on 
the art and there are thousands of professional 
teachers of it. It has, you are informed, a philos- 
ophy of its own. Confucianism is invoked. The 
Universe is represented by three sprays of different 
height — an effect often found also in plantings in 
Japanese gardens. The tallest spray, standing in 
the middle, symbolizes Heaven; the shortest. Earth; 
the intermediate, Man. There may be five, seven 
or nine sprays, but the principle of Heaven, Earth 
and Man must be preserved. There must never be 
an even number of sprays, and four is a number to 
be avoided above all others, since shi, the Japanese 
word for "four", also means "death." 

Significance likewise attaches to the species 
of blooms and branches used. The plum blossom, 
which is sent to brides, symbolizes purity, and also, 
because it flowers when snow is on the ground, stands 
for courage in adversity. 

But just when you begin to flatter yourself that 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 67 

you have acquired some understanding of Flower 
Arrangement you meet some one who does not follow 
the tenets of the particular school of Flower Arrange- 
ment you have heard about — which, let us say, is 
the popular Ikenobo school — but believes in the 
teachings of the Enshiu school, the Koriu school, 
or the Nageire — "thrown in" — school. Or perhaps 
he favours the kindred art called Morimono — 
"things-piled-up" — which deals with compositions 
of fruit and vegetables; or the Morihana school, 
which applies the " things-piled-up " principle to 
flowers; or that other kindred art which teaches the 
making of "tray landscapes" — pictures drawn on the 
flat surface of a tray in pebbles and various kinds of 
sand. 

The essential point in all Flower Arrangement is 
that there shall be form and balance, yet that the 
composition shall not be perfectly symmetrical, 
as perfect symmetry is not found in nature. In 
order to attain the desired effects the flower-stalks 
and branches used are carefully bent and twisted, 
and this work is done with such delicacy and dex- 
terity as to conceal the fact that their forms have 
been altered by artificial means. I have seen a 
Flower Master make waterlilies stand upright on 
their stalks by forcing water up through the stalks 
with a syringe. He then set them on one of those 
flat metal flower-holders we have lately been learning 
to use in this country, so arranging them in a shaUow 
bowl that there was an open space between the stems, 
which he said was "for the fish to swim through" — 



68 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

though the fish was in this case purely a creature of 
his imagination. 

Many methods of making flowers draw water 
are also taught. Especially in the case of chrysan- 
themiuns, the ends of the stalks are burned; the end 
of a hardwood branch is often crushed so that it 
admits water more freely; certain flowers are put 
in hot water; others are dipped in a solution of 
strong tea and pepper. 

The origin of Flower Arrangement is traced 
by Okakura to a time when ancient Buddhist saints 
"gathered the flowers strewn by the storm and, in 
their infinite solicitude for aU living things, placed 
them in vessels of water." We are told that Soami, 
a painter of the Ashikaga period, was an adept, 
and that Juko the Tea Master was his pupil. Flower 
Arrangement thus became a recognized art in 
the fifteenth century, albeit not an independent 
art, since it was at first a branch of Teaism. 

Teaism? They teU you you cannot understand 
Flower Arrangement unless you also understand 
Teaism. What is Teaism? 

Here is unfolded to you a further range for study. 
You knew, of course, that the first thing which 
happens when you pay a caU in Japan, be it a 
business or social call, is the arrival of a cup of clear 
Japan tea, and that the second and third things 
which happen are the arrival of the second and third 
cups. You knew that the tea of Japan is green 
tea, and that it is taken without cream or sugar 
from cups having no handles. You knew, perhaps, 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 69 

that such tea is made with hot — not boiling — water. 
But were you aware that tea is in its highest sense 
not a beverage, but a creed, a ritual, a philosophy? 

The discovery of the brew is said to have been 
made by the Chinese Emperor Chinnung, in the 
year 2737 B.C., but the mythology of Buddhism 
traces the creation of the tea-bush itself to the divert- 
ing god Daruma — that amusing egg-shaped fellow 
often represented in a child's toy which, when pushed 
over, persists in rolling back to an upright position, 
thereby symbolizing unflagging aspiration. "Down 
seven times — up eight times," the Japanese say of 
Daruma. 

Having meditated day and night for weeks, 
Dariuna fell asleep. On awakening he was so 
vexed with his drowsy eyelids that he cut them 
off and flung them to the ground, where they sprouted 
into plants from the leaves of which a sleep-destroying 
beverage might be made. 

The seeds of the tea-plant were brought to Japan 
from China in the year 805 a.d., but the initiation 
of the habit of tea-drinking is generally dated from 
the time, about four centuries later, when the priest 
Eisai, of the Zen sect of Buddhists — a favourite 
sect among artists and tea-drinkers to this day — 
wrote a treatise on *'The Salutary Influence of 
Tea-Drinking," which he presented, along with a 
cup of tea, to one of the early shoguns, who was ill. 
Thus tea was first taken as a medicine "to regulate 
the five viscera and expel evil spirits." 

Not long after this we find the drinking of tea 



70 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

becoming a pastime of the nobiKty, and by degrees 
we see the development of aesthetic practices in 
connection with it. Art objects were displayed 
when people met for tea; sumptuous tea-parties 
were given by dainty os, and one writer tells us that 
there came a period of decadence in the Feudal Era 
when warriors would lay down the sword in favour 
of the teapot, and die cup in hand when their castles 
were taken by their enemies. 

Let me digress here to speak briefly of the Feudal 
Era, the most interesting era of Japanese history. 
It lasted from the twelfth to the middle of the 
nineteenth century — that is, throughout the period 
during which Japan was ruled not by its Emperors, 
but by several successive families of shoguns, or as 
for reasons given later they were sometimes called, 
tycoons. Though the shoguns usurped Imperial 
power it is a noteworthy fact that they did not usurp 
the throne itself nor attempt to destroy the Imperial 
family, but were content to keep the successive 
emperors in a state of impotence. Under the 
shoguns were the daimyos, powerful feudal lords 
acting in effect as provincial governors; and each 
daimyo had his samurai, or fighting men, holding 
rank in several grades. There was also a class of 
samurai known as ronin who acknowledged no 
lord as their master, but were independent fighters 
and trouble-makers. I give this outline because 
these various terms confused me at first. There 
was but one shogun at a time; the daimyos numbered 




Nor is the potency of Ceremonial Tea diminished by the fact 

that it is served by a lovely little Japanese hand (Above) 
While Yuki's fortune was being told I photographed her (Below) 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 71 

between two and three hundred, and it has been 
estimated that there were some two miUion samurai. 
With a very few exceptions — among them rich 
farmers and swordmakers — no one below the rank 
of samurai could wear a sword. The sword-wearing 
class was the ruling class, and ordinary workers 
were regarded as of little consequence. A samurai 
could strike down with his sword any plebeian 
who jostled him by accident, or who as much as 
looked at him in a manner which he found distasteful. 
The rank of samurai corresponded with that 
of knights in feudal Europe, and Japanese families 
who are descended from samurai are proud of the 
fact, precisely as some European families, and indeed 
some American families, are proud of having sprung 
from knightly forbears. 

But to return to our tea. A Zen priest named 
Shuko is said to have originated the idea of associat- 
ing with the habit of tea-drinking the cultivation 
of "the four virtues" — urbanity, purity, courtesy, 
and imperturbability — and this conception, originat- 
ing about the middle of the fifteenth century, is to 
this day a tradition of the Tea Ceremony, or cha- 
no-yu. 

The great soldiers Nobunaga and Hideyoshi, 
chief figures of the latter half of the sixteenth cen- 
tury, were addicts of the Tea Ceremony. It was 
Hideyoshi who caused the Tea Master, Sen-no- 
Rikyu, to consider the various schools of Ceremonial 
Tea which had developed, and codify them. 



72 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

The keynote of the ceremony prescribed by 
Sen-no-Rikyu was "sunphcity" of a most elaborate 
kind. There must be a special teahouse in the 
garden — though in recent times a special tearoom 
in the house is considered adequate. The teahouse 
was required to be small. Its exact dimensions 
were given, down even to the height of the doorway, 
which was so low as to compel guests to enter with 
bowed heads. The house must be simple in the 
extreme, yet built of the choicest woods. The 
character of the tea equipment was specified, as was 
the nature of the decorations. 

This was where Flower Arrangement originally 
came in. A kakemono — one of those Oriental 
paintings mounted on a vertical panel of silk ar- 
ranged to roll up on a cylindrical piece of wood 
and ivory attached to its lower margin — ^must hang 
in the shallow alcove which is the place of honour 
in every Japanese room; and beneath the kakemono 
must be displayed an object of art or an arrange- 
ment of flowers having a certain relationship to the 
painting. 

For example, if the painting be that of a lion 
the suitable flower to be displayed beneath it is the 
peony, because the lion is the king of beasts and the 
peony the king of flowers. This is merely one 
simple instance of an artistic association of ideas, 
infinite in number and sometimes complicated 
in character. Yet these decorative affinities are 
understood not only by the highly educated Japanese, 
but by a large proportion of the people — for the 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 73 

feeling for art is, I believe, distributed more widely 
amongst the people of Japan than amongst those of 
any other nation. The Japanese do not jam their 
homes with furniture and decorations as we so 
often do, but exhibit their art treasures a few at a 
time, keeping most of them put away. It is said 
that Japanese rooms look bare to the average 
foreigner. To me, however, their rooms do not 
look bare, but have an air of exquisite refinement 
seldom found in an American or English room. 

Some Americans who have learned to appreciate 
the Japanese idea of decoration, and who imitate 
it superficially, nevertheless achieve assemblages 
of art objects which, because of the lack of relation- 
ship between them, offend the trained Japanese 
eye precisely as a discord offends a trained musical 
ear. As Chamberlain points out, the Japanese 
have few mere "patterns." They don't make 
"fancy figures" merely for the sake of covering 
up a surface. Their decoration means something — 
as indeed decoration has in its highest periods in all 
countries. 

There have been many Tea Masters since Sen- 
no-Rikyu, and the names of not a few of them are 
remembered to this day with veneration. The 
chief treasure of a friend of mine in Tokyo is a Httle 
teahouse, standing in his garden, which belonged 
some three hundred years ago to Kobori-Enshiu, Tea 
Master to the third Tokugawa shogun. If you 
would know how such associations are valued in 
Japan, go to an auction when some piece of Cere- 



74 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

monial Tea equipment, once the property of a 
famous Tea Master, is coming up for sale. 

Ceremonial Tea has practically nothing to do 
with ordinary tea-drinking. The very tea used 
for the purpose is not like other tea. It comes 
in the form of fine green powder which is placed 
in a special sort of bowl in a special sort of way, 
whereafter water of exactly the right temperature 
and quantity is added, and the mixture is whipped 
to a creamy froth with a tiny bamboo brush, manip- 
ulated in a special manner. Great stress is laid 
upon the frame of mind brought into the tearoom, 
as well as on the etiquette and technique governing 
every detail connected with the making and drinking 
of the tea. The bowl is passed and received accord- 
ing to exact rules, and there is profound bowing 
back and forth. First it circulates as a loving-cup 
amongst the guests; later a special bowl is served 
to each in turn. On accepting the bowl the guest 
revolves it gently in both hands; then with as 
much of the cahn dignity of a Zen Buddhist as he 
is able to exhibit, he raises it and takes a large sip. 
Removing the bowl from his lips he pauses medita- 
tively; then repeats the process. Etiquette de- 
mands that when three large sips have been taken 
there shall reniain in the bowl enough tea to make a 
small sip. In disposing of this final draught great 
gusto must be shown. The head is thrown back 
in indication of eagerness to drain the last drop, 
and the tea is drawn into the mouth with a sucking 
sound which advertises the dehght of the drinker. 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 75 

The second night afterward he may be able to 
sleep. Ceremonial Tea is potent. Nor is its potency 
diminished by the fact that the hand which makes 
and serves it is a characteristically exquisite Uttle 
Japanese hand, set off by the long soft sleeve of a 
flowered silk kimono. 

Obviously you cannot understand Japan without 
understanding the Japanese woman — the nation's 
crowning glory. But as Lafcadio Hearn tells you, 
she is not to be understood without an understanding 
of the organization of Japanese society, which in turn, 
is not to be understood without a comprehension of 
Shintoism, the State religion. 

Everyone has a prescription for understanding 
Japan. One friend told me I could never understand 
it imtil I had grasped the attitude of the people 
toward the Imperial House. But that is only an- 
other way of saying that Shintoism must be under- 
stood. Many, naturally, speak of Buddhism. Others 
mention the feudal system, with its clan loyalty, 
as the touchstone, and still others assured me that a 
knowledge of the Tea Ceremony and the No drama 
were essential. 

"Fujiyama is the key-note of Japan," wrote 
Kipling. "When you understand the one you are 
in position to learn something about the other." 
Sir Charles Eliot, long before he became British 
Ambassador at Tokyo, wrote that it is hopeless 
to attempt to understand Japan without first 
recognizing "the peculiar spirituality of the Japan- 



76 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

ese"; but there are not wanting others to deny the 
existence of any such spirituaHty as Sir Charles 
describes, and who, instead, harp upon the alleged 
Prussianism of Japan as explaining everything. 

Doctor Nitobe, the gifted Japanese author, 
who, like Okakura, writes delightfully in Enghsh, 
gives us as the key to Japan the doctrine of bushido, 
or "mihtary knight ways"; but again there are 
students of Japan who affirm that the system of 
practical ethics attributed by the doctor's patriotic 
pen to the samurai of old, would astound those 
doughty warriors could they hear of it. The book 
**Bushido," declare these critics, is less a key to 
Japan than to Doctor Nitobe. 

Is not the interdependence of facts, of which I 
spoke earlier, illustrated in the trend of this chapter, 
all of which, remember, grew out of a discussion of 
a bunch of flowers in a bamboo vase? Do you see 
why I called Japan "The Isles of Complexities"? 
And do you see that I might also call it "The Isles 
of Contradictions"? 

Perhaps you will not be surprised, then, at my 
confession that after having spent several weeks in 
Japan I found myself fascinated but also puzzled. 
Why, I asked myself, had I so gaily set forth under 
an agreement to write about Japan? Why hadn't 
I made it a mere pleasure trip? For it is one thing 
to see and be satisfied with seeing, and quite another 
to attempt interpretation. 

It has often been said that if a man stays in 
Japan six or eight weeks he can write a book about 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 77 

it; that if he stays a year or two he may write a 
single article for a magazine; but that if he stays 
several years he will be afraid to write at all. 

**To get the Japanese background," one friend 
told me, "you ought to have a month or two in 
Korea, and at least a year in China, Then you 
should come back and rent a house and live in 
Japanese fashion for a while." 

"Say about two hundred years?" I suggested. 

My friend smiled. 

"One hundred and fifty years might do," he 
said, "if you made every minute count." 

Then, perhaps because he read in my face the 
signs of my discouragement, he reminded me of an 
old fable: 

Seven blind men went to "see" an elephant. 
One of them, bumping into the great beast's side, 
said, "Here is a creature resembling a wall." Another, 
feeling the trunk, likened the elephant to a serpent; 
another, touching a tusk, announced that the animal 
resembled a spear; and still another, grasping an 
ear, compared the elephant to a large leaf. The one 
who got hold of the tail likened it to a rope, while 
he who embraced a leg thought of a tree, and he who 
crawled over the back declared that an elephant 
resembled a hill. 

There in a paragraph you have Japan and her 
interpreters. 



PART II 



CHAPTER VII 

The Lyric Impulse — A Man-Made Product — The Remote- 
ness of Woman Suffrage— Efforts Toward Progress — 
Divorce — Marriage and the Go-Between — The Rising Gen- 
eration — Japanese- A merican Duality — Leprosy 

LAFCADIO HEARN teUs us that training in 
the Tea Ceremony "is held to be a training 
-^ in poHteness, in self-control, in delicacy — a 
discipline in deportment"; but Jakichi Inouye, a 
searching and sincere Japanese writer, goes even fur- 
ther, declaring that "the calm, sedate gracefulness of 
the Japanese lady of culture is the result of the study 
of the Tea Ceremony. . . ." 

My one quarrel with Mr. Inouye is over that 
statement. To say that the study of the Tea 
Ceremony assists young ladies to attain poise is 
safe enough; but to say that the fine bearing of the 
Japanese lady is the result of studying the Tea 
Ceremony seems to me to be going altogether too far. 

The bearing of the Japanese lady is a thing too 
exquisite to have been produced by the practice 
of any artificial social ritual. Such a bearing is not, 
in my opinion, to be classed as a mere accomplish- 
ment, though it may have been so a thousand years 
ago. Rather it is the reflection of an incomparably 
lovely spirit, the flower of countless generations of 

81 



82 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

such spirits, reaching back through ages of tradition, 
centuries of self-abnegation. It is the crowning pro- 
duct and proof, not of any Tea Ceremony, but of the 
disciphned civilization of Old Japan. 

Whenever I find my thoughts reverting to the 
Japanese woman, I feel stirring within me a ten- 
dency to lyricism. Let Lafcadio Hearn, whose 
wife was a Japanese lady, speak for me. "Before 
this ethical creation," he writes, "criticism should 
hold its breath; for there is here no single fault 
save the fault of a moral charm unsuited to any 
world of selfishness and struggle. . . . Perhaps 
no such type of woman wiU appear again in this 
world for a hundred thousand years: the conditions 
of industrial civilization will not admit of her ex- 
istence." 

The fact that the Japanese woman is in no small 
degree a man-made product does not fill me with 
admiration for Japanese men, as would some in- 
sentient product of their art. For whereas the 
artist has a right to carve what he will in wood or 
ivory or lacquer, to mould what he will in wax or 
clay or bronze, I doubt his moral right to use the 
human soul as a medium for his craftsmanship 
in making an ornament for his own home, however 
exquisite that ornament may be. 

I am well aware that in this case the end may be 
said to justify the means, but I am enough of an in- 
dividualist to believe in our American system, even 
though I must admit that it has not produced so 
sweet and delicate an average of womanhood as 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 83 

has the Japanese system. Women as we produce 
them exhibit a much wider range of types than may 
be found in Japan, and though a vulgar American 
woman, be she rich or poor, attains a degree of 
vulgarity such as is not even faintly approximated 
in Japan, we also know that we produce types of 
women as fine as the world can show. And while I 
cannot speak with absolute certainty of the in- 
tellectual attainments of Japanese women, I am 
inclined to think that our more liberal attitude 
toward the sex, the greater freedom of companion- 
ship between American women and men, and the 
growth of the American woman's interest and share 
in public matters may tend to make her, at her best, 
a more completely satisfying comrade — not because 
her brains are necessarily better brains than those 
of the women of Japan, or of other countries, but 
because she has been encouraged to exercise them 
in a larger way. 

From my point of view, however, the basic 
question here is not the question of which system 
produces the highest specimens of womanhood, 
but that of the inherent right of the individual to 
develop, let the results be what they may. 

The Japanese woman is not allowed this freedom, 
since it is obviously to the interest of the Japanese 
man to keep her as she is. Lately there has been 
some agitation in Japan for what is called "universal 
suffrage," but it must not be supposed that by that 
term woman suffrage is meant. The proposal 
involves only the extension of the ballot to all males, 



84 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

as against the present system which requires that a 
man shall pay taxes above a certain amoimt in order 
to have a vote. Woman suffrage is not even in 
sight. When I was in Japan a few progressive wo- 
men were asking, not for the vote, but for the abro- 
gation of the rule which denied their sex the right 
to attend poHtical meetings. They were successful. 
The rule was recently abrogated. A movement had 
also been ^started by some advanced women led 
by Mrs. Raicho Hiratsuka, for laws compeUing 
men who wish to marry to obtain medical certifi- 
cates declaring them mentally sound and free from 
diseases of a kind likely to be communicated to a 
wife. I heard that seventy out of three hundred 
girls employed by the railway administration in 
Kyoto had organized an association to aid in the 
advancement of the measures proposed, vowing 
never to marry imless their would-be husbands 
compUed with the requirements for which Mrs. 
Raicho Hiratsuka and her associates were endeavour- 
ing to obtain legal recognition. 

Another matter that wants mending is the legal 
status of married women. So far as I know there 
has been made no serious effort to improve the present 
situation. Under Japanese law a woman, upon con- 
tracting marriage, is debarred from civil rights, having 
practically the standing of a minor. A wife cannot 
transfer her own real estate, bring an action at law, 
or even accept or reject a legacy or a gift, without 
the consent of her husband. Laws not dissimilar to 
these exist, I believe, in some of the more backward 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 85 

states of our own Union. According to the law of 
Japan a widow cannot succeed her husband as head 
of the family if she has a child who can take the suc- 
cession. In matters of inheritance an elder sister 
gives place to a younger son, even to an illegitimate 
son recognized by the father. 

A husband may divorce a wife for adultery, but 
a wife cannot divorce a husband for this cause — 
or rather, she can do so only when he has offended 
with a married woman whose husband has therefore 
brought action for divorce. Thus it will be seen 
that a husband may even take a concubine to live 
in his home, along with his wife and children, without 
giving ground for divorce. Concubinage, I am 
told, is still to some extent practised in Japan, 
though popular opinion is against it. In one respect, 
however, the Japanese divorce laws Eire more en- 
lightened than our own. A husband and a wife who 
agree in desiring a divorce may easily obtain it by 
stating the fact to the court. 

Somehow or other I came to the subject of divorce 
before that of marriage. The Orient and the Occi- 
dent are nowhere farther apart than in their views 
and customs as to the mating of men and women. 
In Japan marriages for love rarely occur, though it is 
said that the tendency of young people to marry 
to suit themselves is growing. Young Japanese 
girls, I am told, often look with envy upon women 
of other nations, where marriage for love is the gen- 
eral rule. Probably they suppose that such matches 
are invariably happy ; that the love is always real love, 



86 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

and that it endures for ever. No doubt our system, 
viewed from afar, looks as rosy to a Japanese girl 
as their system looks appalling to an American girl. 
Yet each has certain merits. The Japanese system 
does not suggest romance, it is true; but is romance, 
after all, the most essential stone in the foundation 
for a happy married life? Romantic notions figure 
too largely in some of our matches, and too little 
in some of theirs. And while the mature judgment 
of older people is with them the determining factor 
in the making of a match, it is too often with us 
no factor at all. 

Marriages in Japan are generally brought about 
by older married couples who act as go-betweens. 
There is a popular saying that everyone should act 
as a go-between at least three times. The go- 
between, knowing a young man and a young woman 
whom he regards as suitable to each other, proposes 
the match confidentially to the parents of both. 
If preliminary reports are mutally satisfactory to 
the two families, a meeting of the young couple and 
their parents and relatives is arranged on neutral 
ground. Any intimation of the real purpose of this 
meeting is tactfully avoided at the time, though the 
purpose of it is, of course, fully understood by all 
concerned. Under this arrangement either family 
may, without giving offence, drop the matter after 
the first meeting, but if the results of the preliminary 
inspection are satisfactory to both sides, the parents 
meet again and definitely arrange the match, which 
is made binding by an exchange of presents. 




You cannot understand Japan without understanding the 
Japanese woman, who is the nation's crowning glory 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 87 

Chamberlain says that while, in theory, the be- 
throthal may not be concluded if either young person 
objects, in practice the two are in the hands of their 
parents, and that "the girl, in particular, is nobody 
in the matter." 

This generalization was doubtless accurate a 
few years ago, and may be accurate to-day in remote 
parts of Japan where Western ideas have not crept 
in, but among the educated classes in large cities 
a distinct change has come over the rising generation. 
There is as great a gap between the older and the 
younger generations in Japan as in the United States, 
and as with us, the older people over there complain 
that youth is getting altogether out of hand, while 
youth complains that its aspirations are not under- 
stood by parents and grandparents. This does not 
mean that Japanese young men and young women 
run practically wild, as so many of our young people 
now are doing, but merely that the slight personal 
freedom they are demanding represents in Japan as 
great a novelty as is exhibited in the United States 
by the change from moderate parental control to no 
control at all. 

Yet the cults and traditions of Old Japan are 
vastly powerful, and though they may yield a 
little here and there, they will not soon be broken 
down. This fact is made apparent in the quick 
reversion to type of Japanese men and women 
who have lived for years in the United States, and 
who, when in the United States, seem to have 
become Quite Hke Americans. Meet them in 



88 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

Japan and you see that their Occidentahsm was 
only skin-deep. While among us they gracefully 
adapted themselves to our ways, and doubtless 
enjoyed them, but always in the back of their minds 
was the knowledge that they were Japanese and 
that they would ultimately return to Japan, there 
to become a part of the finely adjusted mechanism 
of Japanese homogeneity. I know many such 
men and women and find them very interesting. 
They have passed through an extraordinary mental 
and spiritual experience, generally without being con- 
fused by it. Instead of mixing their Japanese and 
American selves, they acquire a perfect duality. 
They can sit on either side of the fence, as it were, 
and look over calmly and interpretatively at the 
other side. 

I discussed this subject with one young matron 
who spent the first twenty years of her life in the 
United States, and who, when she moved to Japan, 
spoke her native tongue with an American accent. 

"My brothers and sisters and I went to American 
boarding schools," she said. "We dressed like 
Americans, had American boy and girl friends, went 
to house-parties, and grew up outwardly, just as 
they were growing up. But always we were taught 
by our parents to understand that this was not to go 
on for ever. 

"When I came to Japan and married I saw that 
the best thing to do was to show people that I 
was as Japanese as any of them. If I had kept up 
my foreign ways it would have been resented. So I 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 89 

became completely Japanese, and for a number of 
years did not even meet Americans who came here. 
Then when I had made clear my attitude and felt 
I was established, I began to see Americans again 
and entertain them." 

In another case a young Japanese in an American 
university used to tell his coUege friends that when 
he went back to Japan he would show his emancipa- 
tion from old Japanese tradition by marrying as he 
pleased. Soon after reaching home, however, he was 
married by his parents to a bride he hardly knew. 
He speaks fluent English, I am told, and has an 
American side which he cam show at wiU, but the 
inner man is essentially as Japanese as though 
he had never been away. And rightly so, of course. 
The Japanese who throws himself as an impediment 
against the movement of the great machine of 
national conventions is not hkely to break so much 
as a single tooth in the smallest of its wheels, but 
will surely break himself. 

But to return to the subject of marriages: 

Having arranged the match, the go-between nat- 
urally takes pride in its success. He befriends the 
young couple; if they are unhappy he mediates be- 
tween them, endeavouring to settle their difficulties; 
and if their unhappiness continues, and divorce is 
spoken of, it becomes his duty to exhaust every re- 
source to prevent their acting rashly. 

Before arranging the match, however, the go-be- 
tween takes precautions to provide against such 
dangers as may be foreseen. He must, for example, 



90 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

make discreet investigations as to the health of both 
famiHes for several generations back, to insure 
against hereditary taints, among which the most 
dreaded is leprosy. 

The Japan Year Book, in most cases a useful 
reference work, is curiously silent on the subject 
of leprosy, though several pages are devoted to 
tuberculosis and other diseases. It was reported 
recently that a million Japanese have tuberculosis, 
but leprosy, though less contagious and consequently 
much less frequent, is more feared. An authority 
has told me that there are probably two million 
lepers in the world and that the only countries 
free from the disease are England and Scotland, 
from which it has been eradicated by segregation. 
It is estimated that New York City has one hundred 
lepers, and that there are cases of it in most, if 
not all states in the Union. Yet according to 
the government report only three states — Cali- 
fornia, Louisiana, and Massachusetts — ^make pro- 
vision for the segregation and care of sufferers from 
this most terrible of diseases. Some people give 
the number of lepers in Japan as under twenty 
thousand. The Home Office sets the figure at sixty- 
four thousand. Specialists, however, say that even 
the latter figure is far too low, and that the actual 
number is nearer one hundred thousand. 

The first leprosarium in Japan was started twenty- 
eight years ago by Roman Catholic missionaries. 
A few years later a second leper hospital was founded 
by Miss H. Riddell, an Englishwoman who has been 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 91 

probably the greatest single influence in bettering 
conditions for the Japanese lepers. Miss Riddell's 
leprosarium at Kumamoto, south Japan, was, I be- 
lieve, used by the Japanese Government as a model 
for the State leprosariums of which there are now 
five. Other such institutions are operated by mis- 
sionaries and private individuals, but the work must 
be greatly extended if it is hoped to check the 
spread of the disease, to say nothing of stamping it 
out. 

A Japanese friend of mine who has frequently 
acted as go-between in arranging matches for em- 
ployees of a large company of which he is an official, 
tells me that girls in families tainted with leprosy 
are often exceptionally beautiful, and that they fre- 
quently have very white skins. In certain parts 
of Japan where leprosy is common there are, he 
tells me, rich families having beautiful daughters 
for whom it is impossible to find husbands in the 
neighbourhood because of rumours that the dread 
disease is in their blood. Such families occasionally 
move to the great cities where they seek to find hus- 
bands for their daughters through matrimonial agents 
or by personal advertisements in newspapers. The 
custom of advertising for a husband or a wife has 
of late years grown considerably, and as has hap- 
pened in this country, rascalities are sometimes dis- 
covered behind such advertisements, wherefore the 
police keep an eye on matrimonial agencies. 

One reason why accurate statistics on leprosy 
are hard to get, not only in Japan, but in all coun- 



92 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

tries, is that families in which a case occurs will often 
go to great lengths to conceal it. In Japan this is 
particularly true because there a leper cannot marry, 
and leprosy is cause for divorce not only in the 
case of the individual actually afflicted, but in 
that of the victim's blood relations including those 
as far removed as second cousins. 

No wonder the go-between feels a sense of respon- 
sibihty! 



CHAPTER VIII 

Wedding Gifts — A Wife s Duties — Adopted Son-Husbands — 
Women in Business and Professional Life — Actresses — The 
''New Woman" — Kissing as a Business Custom — Film 
Censorship — "Oi, Kora!" — Women of Old Japan — The 
Change is Coming 



I 



"THOUGH the Japanese system of arranged 
marriages is sometimes likened to the French 
system, the two are quite different. In 
France the great point is the bride's dowry, but the 
Japanese bride is not necessarily expected to bring a 
dowry of money. Her wedding present from her 
parents consists as a rule of furniture and clothing 
which they give according to their purse. 

The ceremonies connected with a Japanese wed- 
ding are extremely interesting, but are too elaborate 
to be gone into here. There is no wedding trip. 
The bride moves at once to the home of her husband's 
parents, unless she has married a younger son suflfi- 
ciently prosperous and enterprising to set up a home 
of his own. The rule is that the eldest son continues 
to live under the parental roof after his marriage. 
Along with her name and residence the bride trans- 
fers her allegiance absolutely to the husband's family. 
Particular stress is laid upon her duty to her hus- 
band's mother. 

93 



94 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

This fact is recognized in a textbook issued by 
the Imperial Department of Education for use in 
the higher girls' schools, which says: 

Absence of harmony is often witnessed between a husband's 
mother and her daughter-in-law, and this is often traceable to 
the latter's disobedience and undutifulness. The mother-in-law 
may be too conservative to get on smoothly with the young 
daughter-in-law trained in new ideas, but dutifulness, patience, 
and sincerity on the latter's part will bring on peace and harmony 
. . . . If, on the contrary, the daughter-in-law, while 
tolerant of her own weaknesses, is critical toward her husband's 
mother and complains of her heartlessness, she will only betray 
her own unworthiness. These points should always be kept 
in mind by young girls. 



Young Japanese heiresses are doubly fortunate 
since their affluence provides, among other comforts, 
a means of escaping the dreaded mother-in-law. 
Instead of moving to her husband's home, an heiress 
will often bring her husband to the shelter of her own 
paternal roof, where by adoption he becomes a son 
of her family, taking the family name. One hears 
that the bed of roses sought by some of these muko- 
yoshi, or adopted son-husbands, does not prove 
always to be free from thorns, and there is a Japanese 
proverb which advises: "If you have left so much 
as a pound of bad rice, don't become a muko-yoshi." 
The muko-yoshi is not, however, always married to 
an heiress. Poor families having daughters, but no 
sons, will often take in a muko-yoshi to perpetuate 
the family line under the ancestral roof. 
When aU is said, there is no question that the con- 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 95 

dition of Japanese women is slowly improving, 
although the woman movement there is still in 
the academic stage. Little by httle the example 
of women in America and England is making itself 
felt, and the educational opportunities open to women 
are gradually increasing. The average college for 
women is not, to be sure, comparable with the or- 
dinary college for men, but there is said to be one 
university of really high standing which is open to 
women, and a number of other co-educational in- 
stitutions are hsted as fairly good. Waseda College 
is now opening its doors for the first time to women 
as well as men, and though women cannot graduate 
from Tokyo Imperial University, I am informed 
that they are permitted to attend lectures there. 

Women are going more and more into business 
and professional Life. Great numbers of them are 
now employed in the government postal and railway 
offices, in the offices of prefectures and municipahties, 
and, of course, in the telephone service, as weU as by 
private companies of all kinds. Employers report 
steady improvement in the standard of inteUigence 
and capabiHty among their woman employees. 
Women, they say, do their work well and are usuafiy 
content with smaU salaries. In seeking positions 
they generaUy declare that they wish to occupy 
themselves profitably between the time of leaving 
high school and that of marrying. 

Eliminating, for the time being, the geisha, who 
because of her curious occupation wiU be separately 
discussed, and who does not in any case fit into a 



96 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

discussion of woman's progress, since she is in some 
measm-e a barrier to it, we i&nd that the medical 
profession is probably the most profitable field for 
woman workers. There are some seven or eight 
hundred woman doctors in Japan, of whom almost 
half are graduates of the Tokyo School for Women, 
founded by a woman physician. Dr. Y. Yoshioka. 

Trained nursing is also a popular occupation, 
and many girls have lately been leaving office and 
telephone work to take it up, chiefly for the reason 
that trained niu'ses receive from $1 to 11.25 per 
day, which is considered good pay. 

Until ten or a dozen years ago there were no 
actresses in Japan, female roles invariably having 
been played by men, but the octogenarian Baron 
Shibusawa (lately created Viscount), who has done 
so much toward hberalizing the thought of Japan 
in many fines, founded a school for actresses, with 
the result that there is now a place for them, and 
that a few have come to be weU known, although none 
is as yet so popular as are the best-known actors. 
Actors hold in Japan a social position similar to that 
held by Occidental players a century or more ago. 
They are distinctly a lower caste, and while they are 
admired for their art, and are adored by young girls 
as matinee idols are with us, they are considered 
as belonging to a social stratum in which geisha 
and wrestlers figure. 

There are now perhaps a dozen or more women 
working as reporters and special writers on the vari- 
ous Tokyo newspapers. Miss Osawa, who started 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 97 

work on the Jiji Shimpo twenty-one years ago, is, I 
believe, the dean of Japanese woman journahsts. 

There are more than twenty well-known monthly 
magazines for women, many of them edited by 
women and largely contributed to by woman writers. 
Authorship is a traditional occupation for women 
in Japan, women's names being among the greatest 
in the nation's ancient Hterature— in which con- 
nection it is interesting to note the fact that some 
of the old-time authoresses were courtesans. 

One hears a good deal of talk of the "new woman" 
in Japan, and perhaps the surest indication that she 
is coming into being is the fact that supposedly 
humorous postcards are sold on the Tokyo streets, 
in which the new woman is shown in various dicta- 
torial attitudes before a cringing husband. Once, 
at a dinner I attended in Osaka, a \^oman who runs 
a business training school for girls, arose and made a 
short speech. I noticed that while she spoke not a 
few of the men smiled pityingly. From this item 
American women old enough to recall the early days 
of the woman movement in this country will have no 
difficulty in estimating the distance that the Japan- 
ese woman has yet to go. 

Japauiese ladies who have the time and the incUna- 
tion for charitable activity accomphsh a great deal. 
The W. C. T. U. is active in Japan, Mrs. Yajima, 
its president, a lady who, in 1920, at the age of 
eighty-eight, went to England for the International 
W. C. T. U. Convention, being perhaps the leader 
among progressive women of the land. The Red 



98 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

Cross has a large membership, and the Y. W. C. A., 
Hke the Y. M. C. A., has a firmly fixed and useful 
place, caiTN-ing on a wide variet y of activities. Among 
these are classes to teach young girls the Avays of the 
business world >Yliich is so rapidly opening to them. 
As an indication of the need for such instruction, a 
lady who works in the Y. W. C. A. in Tokyo told me 
of a case in which a Japanese girl who came for in- 
struction reported that she was in the habit of kissing 
her foreign employer good morning and good night, 
in the behef — a behef we must suppose to have been 
inculcated by him — that such was the general 
business custom. 

It is often said that the Japanese never kiss. 
Bowing is the national form of salutation, though 
those accustomed to meet foreigners shake hands 
with them. The fact as to kissing is that one never 
sees it, even between mother and child, and that 
this is interpreted as signifying that kissing is un- 
knoAvn. That is not the case. I own an old print 
by Utamaro which shows a man and a woman kissing 
with the greatest zeal. The Japanese simply do 
not kiss indiscriminately or in pubHc places. 

The feehng against demonstrations of affection 
in pubhc is so strong that when American motion 
pictures were first taken to Japan, audiences would 
hoot at those tender passages so much enjoyed by 
some persons in this country. For several years 
past, however, aU such representations have been 
cut from American films intended for exhibition 
over there. This work is done by an American 



^ 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 99 

who lives in Japan, and ^vho has made up what is 
probably one of the strangest films in the ^Yo^ld by 
assembhng all the cuts into one a^vful reel of lust 
and osculation, in Avhich figure most of the widely 
knoAvn American moAie stars. This film he some- 
times runs off privately for his friends, and it is said 
to leave those who witness it in a frame of mind 
to vote kissing a capital offence. 

In a rather pitiful Hst of ten requests made by a 
Japanese wife to her husband, and exhibited as a 
poster at the Girls' Industrial School of Tokyo, was 
the appeal: "Please stop saying 'Oi, kora,' when 
you call me.'' 

Oi, the expression used by most Japanese hus- 
bands when they call their wives, is about equivalent 
to our "Hallo!" or "Hey!" Sometimes a husband 
will caU his wife by name, but one more often hears 
''Oi,'' or "Oi, oi,'' even among persons of position. 
Oi is more familiar than rude. A man would say it 
to his close friend. But a woman would never say 
it to her husband. Kora is really objectionable, 
being an exclamation addressed only to inferiors. 
Naturally, then, wives do not like it, whether they 
make bold to declare the fact or not. For a wffe 
may not even call her husband by his first name, 
but must address him as anata, which is a respectful 
form for "you." 

It has been declared that the peasant woman 
who works beside her husband in the fields or fi.shing 
villages, or who helps him push a cart, or na^dgate a 
boat on the rivers and canals, is the happiest woman 



100 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

in Japan, being a real companion to him. However, 
that may be, there is much room for improvement in 
the attitude of the average middle-class Japanese 
toward his wife. He gets into automobiles and rail- 
road trains ahead of her and has the air of ignoring 
her in pubhc. 

It should be said, though, that the attitude of such 
husbands does not necessarily mean that they do not 
care for their wives. Rather it means that they are 
old-fashioned — that the ancient notion of woman's 
position, based on the teachings of Buddhism and 
Confucianism, has clung to them. But most of all, I 
think, it reveals their fear of being thought ridiculous. 
For if a man showed his wife what we should call or- 
dinary civihty, the old-school Japanese thought him 
henpecked. 

Strangely enough the position occupied by women 
in the days of Japan's early antiquity was much 
higher than it has since become. In olden times 
women took part in war, had a voice in politics, and 
in other ways held their own with men. In the 
eighth century successive Empresses occupied the 
Imperial throne, and the influence of certain able 
women was strongly felt at court; two centuries later 
we find a great era of literary women many of whose 
names are famous to this day. 

But soon after the introduction of Buddhism 
and Confucianism all this was changed. The 
Buddhist doctrine called women creatures of sin, 
treacherous and cruel; and says Confucius: "When 
a boy is born let him play with jewels; when a girl 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 101 

is born let her play with tiles." So it came about 
that woman's position declined mitil it was pos- 
sible for a famous morahst to write a treatise on the 
Duty of Woman, containing such maxims as these: 

A woman should look upon her husband as if he were Heaven 
itself, and never weary of thinking how she may yield to him, 
and thus escape celestial castigation. Let her never dream of 
jealousy. If her husband be dissolute she must expostulate 
with him but never either nurse or vent her anger. Should 
her husband become angry she should obey him with fear and 
trembling and not set herself up against him in anger and fro- 
wardness. 

An endless quantity of such quotations may be 
taken from the writings of moral teachers, and in 
them is indicated the debt of the women of Japan 
to Chinese doctrines. In view of which it seems 
strange indeed to visit a Buddhist temple and there 
be shown coils of thick black rope which was used in 
the erection of the building, and which was made 
entirely from the hair of devout women who sacrificed 
their prized tresses for this purpose, being too poor 
to give aught else. 

Thus, while the Occident was teaching men 
to be chivalrous toward women, the Orient was 
teaching women to be, as one might put it, chivalrous 
toward men. But in both cases the modern ten- 
dency is toward change. The growth of woman's 
economic independence in this country, making her 
man's competitor, tends to make man less polite 
in his general casual contacts with her. Having 
elected to be his equal she must take her chances 



1C2 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

with him in the subway rush and in the scramble 
for street-car seats. 

Fifty years hence, Japan will perhaps have reached 
this pass, but the present rudeness of men to women 
is not that of equals to equals, but of superiors to 
inferiors; that is the thing that must be changed. 

And it will be changed. Slowly, very slowly, the 
attitude of the Japanese man toward the Japanese 
woman is improving. I found that evening classes 
were being held at the Y. W. C. A. in Tokyo for the 
purpose of teaching young husbands and wives 
how to enjoy social life together, and there is no 
doubt that in fashionable society the better type 
of modern young husband treats his wife with much 
more consideration and courtesy, and makes much 
more a companion of her, than was customary or 
even possible under the old regime. Twenty-five 
years ago it was well enough for a man to walk on 
the street with a geisha, but the man who walked 
in pubhc with his wife was jeered at, and might even 
find himself a target for missiles. Though that is 
no longer the case, the tradition that man should 
assume a superior air still to • some extent survives 
among the masses, so that for a husband to treat 
his wife with perfect courtesy before strangers re- 
quires, singular though it may seem, real moral 
courage. 



CHAPTER IX 

Baseball in Japan — Tr^ ycdio'^a. Spc^: — ^''i.::^:^.j c^.d 
Shintoism — Fan.s — Wre-<:.ers' Ea"^.:^.:! — T'"^ yz:iz^..z! 
Game Building — Formalities Before :v /"/:::: h^.: — T'^^ 
Super-Chiomp ions — Peculiarities of J:z : - -.:-. '■'■''i ::'.-. -. : — 
Days On 

THOUGH the grip of the American national 
game upon Japan is sufficiently strong to 
have brought a Japanese university team to 
this country and to have taken one or two American 
universit\- teams to Japan for return games, there 
is as yet no professional baseball in Nippon, and 
the kind of wrestling known as sumo still maintains 
its ancient prestige as the national sport. 

Ha^TQg been in Tokyo at the time of an election 
and again during the annual spring wrestling season, 
I could not but he struck by the fact that the street 
crowds watching the bulletin boards for the results 
of the physical contests were larger and more enthu- 
siastic than the crowds which assembled to learn 
the results of the poKtical struggle. 

The average Japanese knows. I beheve. about as 
much and about as Httie of domestic poHtics as 
the average American. He has a loose idea of the 
stmcture of the government and of poHtical machin- 
ery; he foUows pohtical leaders rather than causes, 

103 



104 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

and like us he is prone to read rich meanings into 
the ghb banalities of politicians. 

Wrestling he understands much better. He knows 
all its fine points. His enthusiasms on this subject 
are informed enthusiasms, and unlike the baseball 
fan, he inherits them from a long line of ancestors — 
for compared with wrestling, baseball is a brand- 
new sport. When the Greeks and Romans wrestled, 
the Japanese were wrestling, too. In the ninth 
century the Japanese throne was wrestled for. A 
Mikado died and left two sons, and these, instead 
of going to war against each other, left their claims 
to be settled by a wrestling match. 

The sport is, furthermore, associated, in a manner 
more or less diaphanous, with Shintoism. Certain 
Shinto traditions are connected with it, and the 
matches used to be held in the grounds of Shinto 
temples — as indeed amateur matches often are to- 
day in country districts. 

For many years past it has been customary to 
hold wrestKng meets in Tokyo twice yearly, in 
January and May. Prior to the construction of the 
Kokugikwan, or National Game Building, the large 
steel and concrete structure in which the meets are 
now held, they occurred in the grounds of the Eko-in 
temple. January is a cold month in Tokyo and 
even May is often chiUy, wherefore, the audience 
was none too comfortable at these open-air matches. 
Moreover, Japan is a rainy land; the old open-air 
matches had frequently to be declared off because 
of bad weather; sometimes it took twenty days to 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 105 

run off a ten-day meet. But the Kokugikwan has 
put an end to these difficulties. The modern Japan- 
ese wresthng fan keeps warm and dry, with the result 
that the sport now has more devotees than ever. 

During the wrestling season Tokyo is profoundly 
excited. Men of large affairs have a way of disap- 
pearing mysteriously from their offices. Officials 
of banks and large corporations are vaguely reported 
to be "out of town for a few days." Prince Toku- 
gawa, President of the House of Peers, suddenly 
becomes a difficult gentleman to find — unless, 
perchance, you happen to know where to look for 
him. So, too, with many a man of smaller conse- 
quence. If he can afford it — often whether he can 
afford it or not — ^he drops his work and vanishes. 
But he does not always v£uiish; for if his enthusiasm 
for wresthng verges on dementia he may adorn 
himseff in an eccentric manner and make himself 
conspicuous in the auditorium by his antics and his 
cries. Thus certain wrestling fans of Tokyo have 
come to be considered privileged characters — as, 
for instance, the one who always appears at the 
great matches in a coat of scarlet silk, which his 
father wore before him, and whose habit it is to 
prance down the aisle before the wrestlers as they 
march in solemn procession to the ring. 

When I inquired about tickets for one of the days 
of the great meet I was strongly remindedof our World 
Series baseball games. It seemed that tickets were 
not to be had. Eventually, however, I managed 
to secure them in the way such things are secured 



106 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

the world over — by means of "pull." I found 
a friend who had a sporting friend who knew a 
wrestler who could get seats. 

The attitude of the sporting Japanese gentleman 
toward wrestlers resembles that of the sporting 
American or Englishman toward pugilists and 
jockeys. It is chic to know them, but not as equals. 
One is very genial with them and at the same time 
a little patronizing, whereas they are expected to 
assume a slightly deferential manner. Perhaps 
the attitude of the Japanese sporting gentleman 
toward his favourite wrestlers is rather more like 
that of the Spanish sporting gentleman toward bull- 
fighters, for in both countries it is customary for 
the wealthy patron to give expensive presents to 
the hero. But whereas in Spain handsome jewelry 
is sometimes thrown to the bull-fighters in the ring, 
it is the custom in Japan for the fan to throw his hat, 
coat, pocketbook, cigarette case, or whatnot to the 
popular idol, who later sends the trophy back to 
the owner, receiving in exchange a valuable gift — 
frequently a gift of money. 

Hence, though the actual pay of wrestlers is 
small, perquisites make the profession profitable 
to those fairly successful in it, and poor parents, 
having a son of unusually large proportions, are 
likely to look with resignation upon the Japanese 
theory that great size is generally accompanied by 
stupidity, and to rejoice in the dimensions of their 
offspring because of a fond hope that he may become 
a champion wrestler and grow rich. 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 107 

My friend the Japanese sporting gentleman (who, 
by the way, was a graduate of the University of 
Michigan) did more than obtain tickets for me. He 
called with his automobile and took me to the am- 
phitheatre. 

*'Our mode of wrestling is not at all like yours," 
he said, "and I want to explain it to you." 

It was about eleven in the morning when, after 
traversing several streets strung with rows of Japan- 
ese lanterns, and filled with hurrying throngs, we 
reached the great circular concrete building into 
which an eager crowd was pouring through many 
portals — an audience which, though made up for 
the most part of men, contained not a few women 
and some children. Many, though by no means 
all of the women were geisha, for wrestlers have 
about the same rank as geisha in the social scale, 
and they are often the heroes as well as the intimates 
of the fair entertainers. 

As we approached the amphitheatre the thought 
came to me that there is a curious sameness in the 
atmosphere surrounding great sporting events the 
world over, however little the various sports them- 
selves may resemble one another. To approach 
this great building in Tokyo during wrestling week 
is quite like approaching the Plaza de Toros in 
Madrid, or the building in which yat alai is played in 
Havana, or the Polo Grounds in New York, or the 
Yale Bowl, or the Harvard Stadium. 

The Kokugikwan is a circular building roofed 
with glass and seating fourteen or fifteen thousand 



108 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

persons. At the centre is a mound of earth with a 
flat top on which the ring is marked with a border 
of woven straw. Over the ring is a kiosk supported 
by four heavy posts which are respectively red, 
green, black, and white in colour, and are considered 
to symbolize the four corners of the earth. The 
kiosk has a roof somewhat resembling that of a 
temple and is embeUished with curtains of purple- 
and-white silk which hang down a few feet below 
the eaves. 

The main floor of the amphitheatre is banked 
up toward the back. The seats at the ringside are 
reserved for the participant wrestlers; behind these 
are some tiers of chairs which are presumably 
occupied by the most frantic fans, and behind the 
chairs comes a great area of boxes, each seating 
from four to six persons. These boxes, like those 
of a typical Japanese theatre, do not contain chairs, 
but are floored with thick straw mats on which are 
cushions for the occupants to squat on. The only 
division between the boxes is a raiHng about a foot 
high. Above the main floor are two galleries running 
all the way around the building. The Imperial 
box is in the first gallery. People in the galleries 
sit in chairs, in front of which are narrow shelf -hke 
tables from which luncheon may be eaten — ^for 
wrestling matches, like the old-style theatrical per- 
formances, last practically all day. 

During the first part of the morning, bouts between 
numerous minor wrestlers are run off*, but at about 
eleven the building fiUs up, for everyone wishes to 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 109 

see the two groups of champions march in. One 
group represents East Japan, the other West Japan; 
each group contains about twenty men, and their 
seats are at the eastern and western sides of the ring, 
respectively. This representation of East and West 
is not hteral, but is the traditional division. A man 
from an Eastern province may be champion of the 
West, and vice versa. 

Gross-looking creatures, naked to the waist, 
they enter in single file, each wearing a long velvet 
apron, elaborately embroidered and tasselled. These 
aprons, which are given to them by their patrons, 
are removed before the contests, a loin-cloth and 
short skirt of fringe being worn beneath them. 

Marching into the ring the champions form a 
circle and go through a series of set exercises, clapping 
their hands in unison, raising their legs high and 
stamping their feet violently upon the ground to 
exhibit their muscular flexibility. After these ex- 
ercises they march out again. 

Next enter the supreme champions of the Eastern 
group and of the Western group — the two great 
wrestlers of Japan — popular idols who, by reason of 
having remained undefeated throughout three or 
more successive wrestling meets, are entitled to wear 
not only the elaborate velvet apron, but a very thick 
white rope wound several times about their waists and 
knotted in a certain way. 

Each of these super-champions is attended on 
his march to the ring by two other wrestlers. The 
one who precedes him is known as the tsuyu harai. 



no MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

or dew-brusher. In theory, he clears the way, brush- 
ing dew from imaginary grass before the feet of the 
mighty one. The attendant who brings up the rear 
is the tachi mochi, or sword-bearer; for according 
to old Japanese custom no wrestler except a super- 
champion was allowed to wear a sword, and though 
the sword is now only a symbol, the custom still 
survives, and the sword of the super-champion 
must be carried in behind him. 

To one accustomed to the sort of wrestling prac- 
tised in the Western world, many of these champions 
do not look hke athletes, since they are, as a rule, 
so fat that their paunches bulge like balconies over 
the tops of their aprons and loin cloths, and their 
arms and thighs tremble like jeUy when they walk. 
Under the Japanese method of wrestling, however, 
each match is quickly settled, wherefore endurance 
is not so important as great weight and power in 
the first moment of attack. It is for this reason that 
fat wrestlers are usually the most successful. Some 
of them have weighed as much as three hundred 
and fifty pounds. But now and then there comes 
along a super-champion like Tachiyama, who is not 
very fat, and who conquers by strength, speed, and 
reach rather than by mere weight. 

When the super-champions have exhibited them- 
selves, the two groups of lesser champions return 
and occupy their seats around the ring. The four 
referees — ^retired wrestlers — take seats on cushions, 
one at each corner of the kiosk, and the umpire, 
wearing beautiful flowing silks and a strange little 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 111 

pointed hat like that of a Buddhist priest, enters 
the ring and, holding up the lacquered wooden 
fan, which is his badge of office, announces in im- 
pressive tones the names of the two men who are 
about to meet. 

The adversaries then enter the ring and go through 
the same old series of stampings and flexings. Each 
takes a handful of salt from a box at his side of the 
ring, puts a httle in his mouth and throws the rest 
upon the ground before him. This is supposed 
to have a purifying effect, not in the antiseptic 
sense, but in some occult way. Salt is often used 
thus in Japan. 

Having completed these preliminaries the two men 
take their positions facing each other, braced upon 
all fours. But this apparent readiness by no means 
indicates that the contest is commencing. Instead 
of immediately attacking, they will often remain 
thus poised for minutes, sharply watching each 
other. Then one of them will get up and take a 
drink, or will go for some more salt and throw it in 
the ring. Also one or the other will often make a 
false start, attacking when his adversary is not ready 
to accept combat; whereafter the two resume their 
crouching attitudes, toes braced, hands on the 
ground. This sort of thing may continue for ten or 
twenty minutes, to the accompaniment of howls 
from the fans, who shout the names of their favour- 
ites and bellow Japanese equivalents for such 
Americanisms as "Go to it!" and "Atta Boy!" 

But whereas the period of preparation may often 



112 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

be measured in fractions of an hour, the actual 
struggle usually consumes but a few seconds. The 
men spring at each other like a pair of savage fighting 
dogs and the contest is settled before you know it. 
There is none of that straining to get a certain hold, 
or to break one, which is so characteristic of our 
style of wrestling, and you never see the contestants 
writhing in deadly embrace upon the floor. The 
vanquished need not necessarily be thrown at all, 
though often he is. If any portion of his body, other 
than the soles of his feet, touches the ground, or if 
(whether he be thrown or not) any portion of his 
body touches the ground outside the ring, that means 
defeat. In case both men faU, or are forced from 
the ring together, the one who first makes contact 
Avith the ground, or first leaves the ring, is van- 
quished. 

Often a man is beaten by being bent over imtil 
he is forced to support himself on one hand, and 
there have been cases in which decisions were ren- 
dered merely because one man's head was bent 
down until his top-knot touched the floor. A 
Avrestler wiU sometimes win in one hard push, back- 
ing his opponent out of the ring; but in this there is 
always the damger that the one being pushed wiQ 
at the last moment step aside, causing the adver- 
sary's own momentum to carry him beyond the 
boundary, thus applying an underlying principle 
of jiu-jutsa, — or jiudo, as it is called in its improved 
form — ^in which a man's own strength is used to 
defeat him. Frequently, however, there will be a 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 113 

spectacular throw; and sometiraes, when this occurs, 
the ringside seats, so coveted at wrestHng and boxing 
matches in this country, are not highly desirable. 
I have seen huge wrestlers hurled through the air 
to land sprawhng on their comrades in their seats. 

When a close decision has to be made the lunpire 
confers with the referees, and at such times the 
audience and the two opposing groups of wrestlers 
are vociferous in support of the contestant they 
favour. 

To the credit of the Japanese be it said, however, 
that they do not yell: "Kill the umpire!" when dis- 
pleased by a decision rendered in connection with 
their national sport; that they do not throw bottles 
at the umpire, and that it never becomes necessary 
to give poHce protection to an umpire whose judg- 
ment has not accorded with that of the crowd. 
The Japanese, you see, have not adopted every 
detail of Western civihzation. 

I must have seen twenty-five or thirty bouts that 
day. But though I was interested I cannot pretend 
to find in Japanese wrestHng the qualities of a really 
great sport. Skill their wrestlers have, but there 
is no call for stamina. Their style of wrestHng 
seems to me to leave off where ours begins. 

Japanese life runs at lower pressure than our Hfe. 
There is not the nervous rush about it. Matters 
move at a more comfortable pace, and people seem 
to have more patience. An American crowd would 
become restless over the interminable preliminaries 
of each Japanese wrestHng bout, and would find 



114 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

the bout itself unsatisfactory because of its brevity 
and the lack of sustained effort. The Japanese, 
on the other hand, seem always to be willing to wait 
for something to happen. One notices this in 
innumerable ways. Motion pictures made in Japan 
are likely to be, from our point of view, intolerably 
slow in their action. So also with the all-day plays 
of the typical Japanese theatre. 

The Japanese business man's custom of taking 
a day off whenever it happens to suit him is doubtless 
due in part to the fact that until recently Sunday in 
Japan was just like any other day. There was no 
regular day of rest. One day a month was usually 
appointed as a holiday for commercial and industrial 
workers; later it became two days a month; and 
at last there developed a custom of making those 
days the first and third Sundays of the month. 
For though Sunday has, of course, no religious 
significance in the eyes of the large body of Japanese, 
it seemed the most practical day to select for a 
holiday if only because it was a day on which the 
offices of American and European residents were 
closed. 



CHAPTER X 

The Courageous Congressmen — Geisha and Nesan — The 
Maple Club — The Gentleness of Servants — Removable Walls 
— Dancing Girls — A Lesson in the Use of Chopsticks — 
*' Truthful GirV — A Toast in Sake — Drunkenness — My 
Friend the Amiable Inebriate — The Great Rice-Ball Mystery 

IT AMUSED me to hear, a little while ago, 
that a party of our Congressmen, on a junket 
in Japan, had been implored by certain pious 
Americans over there, to avoid such sinful things as 
teahouses and geisha. No doubt the poor devils of 
Congressmen had fancied they would be able to 
lead their own Uves five thousand miles from home 
and constituents. And evidently they proposed to 
do it, for they rephed with uncongressmanlike 
boldness that teahouses and geisha were among 
the things they most desired to see. That pleased 
me not only because it showed that a Congressman 
can be spunky — even though he has to go to another 
hemisphere to do it — but because it showed a 
normal human interest in what is assuredly a very 
curious phase of life. 

I, too, was interested in tea houses and geisha, and 
I made it a point to find out as much about them 
as I could. 

The first geisha I saw were in attendance at a 

115 



116 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

luncheon for some forty persons — about half of them 
Americans — given by a Tokyo gentleman for the 
purpose of showing us what a purely Japanese 
luncheon was like. It was held at the Maple 
Club, a large, rambHng Japanese-style building 
standing in charming gardens in the midst of one 
of the Tokyo parks — a Far Eastern equivalent 
of such Parisian restaurants as the Cafe d'Armenon- 
ville or the Pre Catelan. 

As we alighted from our rickshas a flock of smil- 
ing serving maids appeared in the doorway to greet 
us, indicating to us that we were to sit on the high 
door-step and have our shoes removed by the blue- 
clad cooHes who were in attendance — each with the 
insignia of the Maple Club in a large design upon 
the back of his coat. (If you wish the coolie who 
draws your ricksha or does other work for you 
to wear your crest you supply his costume and 
pay him a few cents extra per day.) 

When our shoes had been checked and our feet 
encased in soft woollen sHppers like bed-bootees, 
we were bowed into the building and escorted 
through a series of rooms with soft straw-matted 
floors and walls of wood and paper. Emerging 
upon an outer gallery of highly pohshed wood, we 
foUowed it, looking out over the lovely garden as 
we moved along, and finally reached a flight of 
stairs, also of wood having a satiny polish, which 
led to the banquet hall. Our escorts on this journey 
were several Httle Japanese maids in pretty kimonos, 
who, though they spoke no English, talked to us in 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 117 

soft international smiles. No one without a sweet 
nature could smile the smile of one of these Japanese 
serving maids. They are called nesan, meaning 
literally "elder sister." This famiHar appellation 
is generally used in speaking to a maidservant 
whose name one does not know, and in the tenn is 
revealed a hint of the beautiful relationship which 
exists in Japan between master and servant, whether 
in a private house or a Japanese inn. In the great 
cities this old relationship is to some extent breaking 
down as Japan becomes Westernized, but in Japanese 
hotels and country inns, and in prosperous homes 
one sees it still. Service is rendered with a grace 
and friendhness which make it very charming. 
Even about the menservants in the houses of the 
rich there is nothing of the flunkey spirit. The Jap- 
anese manservant generally wears silken robes which 
give him a fine dignity and make it difficult, some- 
times, to differentiate him from members of the fam- 
ily. He is extremely pohte, but not rigid. You feel 
that he is a self-respecting man. As for maidservants, 
they are hke so many pet butterflies. One of Japan's 
strongest claims to democracy, it seems to me, is 
founded on the attitude existing between master and 
servant. 

Those who have visited Japan, yet who do not 
agree with me as to the exquisite courtesy of the 
Japanese servant, wiU be those whose stopping 
places have been European-style hotels in the large 
cities. In such hotels the service is often poor and 
one occasionally encounters a servant who is surly 



118 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

and ill-mannered. I encountered one such in 
Kobe — said to be the rudest city in Japan. But by 
the time I ran across him I had seen enough of the 
real Japan to know what such rudeness signified. 
It showed merely that in this individual case native 
courtesy had been worn away by contact with in- 
numerable ill-bred foreigners. 

But to return to our luncheon. 

As a concession to American custom our host 
greeted us with a handshake, and his Japanese 
guests walked in and shook hands instead of dropping 
to their knees on entering and bowing to the floor 
according to the old national custom. 

The room, which was large, well illustrated the 
elasticity of the Japanese style of building. Five or 
six private dining rooms usuaUy occupied this section 
of the house, but for the requirements of the present 
occasion the walls forming these rooms had been 
removed making the entire area into one spacious 
chamber. It is a simple matter to remove such 
walls, since they consist only of a series of screens 
of wood and paper which sHde in grooves and can 
easily be lifted out and put away in closets. And let 
me add that, though the climate of Japan is very 
damp, the Japanese use such thoroughly seasoned 
wood, and work in wood so admirably, that I never 
once found a sUding screen that stuck in its grooves. 

For the meal we knelt upon silk cushions 
laid two or three feet apart around three walls 
of the room. As the weather was chilly there 
stood beside each of us a brazier, or hibachi, consist- 




o a ^ 

o 

O o^ 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 119 

ing of a pot of live charcoal standing in a wooden 
box. The Japanese love of finish in all things is 
shown in the careful way they have of banking the 
ashes in a hibachi, and making neat patterns over 
the top of them. 

In front of each of us was placed a little table of red 
lacquer about a foot high, with an edge hke that of a 
tray, and on this table were sundry covered bowls of 
lacquer and of china, and little dishes containing sour 
pickles and a pungent, watery brown sauce. In front 
of every one or two guests knelt a nesan, presiding 
over a covered lacquered tub, containing boiled rice, 
which is eaten with almost everything, and even 
mixed with green tea and drunk with it out of the 
rice-bowl. 

Also, in attendance upon each guest, there was a 
geisha. Some of the geisha were women perhaps 
twenty years old, wearing handsome dark kimonos 
which they generally carried with a great deal of 
style, but others were little maiko, dancing girls, in 
brilliant-coloured kimonos with the yard-long sleeves 
of youth. The youngest of these was perhaps twelve 
years of age, while the oldest may have been sixteen. 

As I afterward learned, there is a vast difference 
between various grades of geisha. Those present at 
this luncheon were among the most popular in Tokyo. 
They were truly charming creatures, sweet-faced, 
soft-eyed and gentle, with beautiful manners and 
much more poise than is shown by the average 
Japanese lady. For Japanese ladies are not, as a 
rule, accustomed to our sort of mixed social life, 



120 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

in which husbands and wives take part together, 
whereas geisha are in the business of entertaining 
men and presumably understand men as women 
seldom do. 

Since few geisha speak EngUsh, and very few 
Americans speak Japanese, we travellers from abroad 
are rather outsiders with the geisha, and our ap- 
preciation of them must be largely ocular. But a 
geisha can come as near to carrying on a wordless 
conversation as any woman can. Mine smiled 
at me, filled my shallow Uttle cup with warm sake 
from time to time, and showed me how to use my 
chop-sticks. I found the lesson most agreeable, 
and was presently rewarded by being told, through 
the Japanese friend at my side, that for a beginner 
I was doing very well. 

If you want to know what it is like to eat with 
chop-sticks try sitting on the floor and eating from a 
bowl, placed in front of you, with a pair of pencils 
or thick knitting needles. It is a dangerous business, 
and the risk is rendered greater by the fact that the 
Japanese do not wear napkins in their laps, and that 
to soil the spotless matting is about the greatest 
sin the barbarian outlander can commit. The 
Japanese napkin is a small soft towel which is 
brought to one warm and damp, in a little basket. 
It is used on the face and hands as a wash-cloth 
and is then removed. 

Presently my geisha called one of her sisters in 
the craft to witness my progress with the chop- 
sticks. The new arrival was named Jitsuko — 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 121 

otherwise "truthful girl" — and she seemed to be 
quite the most fashionable of them all. Her kimono, 
with its dyed-out decorations and its five ceremonial 
crests, was very handsome and was worn with great 
chic, her obi was a gorgeous thing richly patterned 
in gold brocade, and I noticed that she wore upon 
it a pin containing a very fine large diamond — a 
most unusual sort of trinket in Japan. Also she 
wore a ring containing a large diamond. Nor was 
this foreign note purely superficial. For, to my 
dehght, Jitsuko spoke to me in English. She was 
one of Tokyo's two Enghsh-speaking geisha, and 
as I later learned, had the honour of being nominated 
as the geisha to entertain the Duke of Connaught 
at dinners he attended at the time of his visit to 
the Japanese capital. 

Jitsuko and the other geisha talked together about 
me. Then Jitsuko paid me the compliment of 
saying that they agreed in thinking that I looked a 
little bit Hke a Japanese. I thanked her, and re- 
turned the compliment in kind, saying that I thought 
they also looked like Japanese, and very pretty ones, 
whereat they both giggled. 

By this time we had estabhshed an entente so 
cordial that it seemed fitting that we should drink to 
each other. Aided by the gentleman at my side and 
by Jitsuko, I learned the proper formalities of this 
ceremony. First I rinsed my sake cup in a lacquer 
bowl provided for the purpose, then passed it to 
Jitsuko. The preliminary rinsing indicated that she 
was now to fill the cup and drink. Had I passed 



122 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

it to her without rinsing, it would have meant that 
she was to refill it for me — ^for a geisha never "plies" 
one with sake but waits for the cup to be passed. 
When she had sipped the sake she in turn rinsed the 
cup, refilled it, and handed it to me to drink. Thus 
the friendly rite was completed. 

I had heard that sake was extremely intoxicating, 
but that is not so. It is rice wine, almost white in 
colour, and is served sometimes at normal temper- 
ature and sometimes slightly warm. It is rather 
more like a pale light sherry than any other Oc- 
cidental beverage, but it lacks the full flavour of 
sherry, having a mild and not unpleasant flavour all 
its own. On the whole I rather liked sake, and I 
found myself able to detect the difference between 
ordinary sake and sake that was particularly good. 
While on this subject I may add that liquor of 
all sorts flows freely in Japan. Sake is the one alco- 
holic beverage generally served with meals in the 
Japanese style, but at the European-style luncheons 
and dinners I attended two or three kinds of wine 
were usually served, and there were cocktails before 
and sometimes liqueurs afterward. The Japanese 
have also taken up whisky-drinking to some extent. 
They import Scotch whisky and also make a bad 
imitation Scotch whisky of their own. But sake 
still reigns supreme as the national alcohoHc drink, 
and when you see a Japanese intoxicated you may 
be pretty sure that sake — a lot of sake — did it. 

In my evening strolls, particularly in the gay, 
crowded district of Asakusa Park in Tokyo — a 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 123 

Japanese Coney Island, full of theatres, motion- 
picture houses, animal shows, conjuring exhibitions, 
teahouses, bazaars and the like, surrounding a great 
Buddhist temple — I saw many intoxicated men, but 
I never came upon one who was ugly or troublesome. 
Whether because of some quality in the Japanese 
nature, or in the sake, this drink seems only to 
make gay, talkative and sometimes boisterous those 
who have taken too much of it. I should not be 
surprised if the Japanese need alcoholic stimulants 
rather more than other races need them. For one 
thing the climate of Japan, except in the mountains, 
is enervating; and for another, the Japanese nature 
is generally repressed, and sake tends to liberate it. 

I noticed this at another entertainment in Tokyo 
— a dinner of newspaper editors. Being the only 
foreigner there, and being enormously interested in 
the problems connected with relations between 
the United States and Japan, I launched forth, 
telling them my views in the hope of learning theirs. 
But although I sensed that they did not agree with 
all I said, their responses exhibited only the sort 
of polite tolerance that a courteous host will show 
a somewhat obstreperous guest. For some time 
I felt that I had acted like a bad boy at a party. 
But after the geisha had filled our cups with sake 
more than once, I got what I was looking for — an 
argument. It was a polite argument, but we had 
become friendly enough to speak frankly. In sake 
Veritas. 

This was a case of just enough sake, but so far 



124 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

as I was able to observe, even too much sake pro- 
duces no very objectionable results. I shall never 
forget the young man, brightly illuminated with this 
beverage, who came up to me one evening on the 
street, in a small town. He was full of a desire to 
practise EngHsh on me and to help me. He didn't 
care what he helped me to do. He would help me 
to buy whatever I wanted to buy, go wherever I 
wanted to go, or stay wherever I wanted to stay. 

I explained to him that I was only strolling about 
while waiting for a train and that it was now time 
for me to return to the station. 

"Wait!" he cried. "I hke you. I am drawn 
to you. I have been in America. I can talk to 
you. We are friends. Wait!" He looked about 
him hurriedly, then darted into a near-by shop. 

In a moment he emerged and came running toward 
me bearing in his extended hand a curious-looking 
object, resembhng, as nearly as I could see in the 
dim hght, a somewhat soiled popcorn ball. This 
he pressed into my hand with a generous eagerness 
which could not fail to convey to me the fact his 
heart went with the gift. 

"It is a present. It is for you. You will remem- 
ber me. Another kind might be better, but you 
are in a hurry." 

My fingers grasped something heavy but yielding 
and glutinous. As I thanked my new-found friend I 
examined it. It was a ball of rice somewhat larger 
than a baseball. Scattered through it were brown 
objects the precise nature of which I was unable to 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 125 

determine. I might yen" accm-ately have told the 
donor that I was "stuck on" his present, since 
the mass in my hand was held in form not merely 
by the cohesiveness of the rice, but also by some 
substance of the nature of molasses. 

We parted. I moved toward the railroad station 
where my family and friends were waiting with 
Yuki, our invaluable maid. As I walked along I 
studied the object. Obviously it was intended to 
be eaten. Yet there were other purposes to which 
it might be put. It was a thing that a Sinn Feiner 
would hke to have in his hand as the British Prem- 
ier passed by in a silk hat. Charley Chaphn would 
have known what to do with it. It was hea>'ier 
than a custard pie and fully as dramatic. 

My first impulse was to drop it as soon as I could 
do so unobserved; but the thought occurred to me 
that it was probably a Japanese dehcacy, and that 
Yuki might Hke it; wherefor I carried it to the sta- 
tion. 

^\llen I offered it to Yuki she looked surprised. 
Her refusal was courteous but determined. 

"Where Mr. Street get that?" she demanded. 

"A man gave it to me. Here, you take it." 

Yuki giggled and stepped back. 

"But what the man give it to Mr. Street for.^" 

"A present. What's the matter with it.^ Isn't 
it good to eat.^" 

"Yes — good to eat." 

"^Miy don't you take it, then?" 

Giggling, she shook her head. 



126 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

"But Yuki— I don't understand. What's the 
joke?" 

Shaking with merriment she whispered to my wife. 
It developed that the sake-inspired Japanese had 
presented me with a tidbit specially prepared for 
prospective mothers. 

All things considered it seemed advisable to get 
rid of it at once. I threw it on the railroad track. 



CHAPTER XI 

A Japanese Meal — Other Meals — Smoking and the Duty 
on Cigars — Japanese Music — Geisha Dancing — What Is 
a Geisha? — Their Refinement — Autumn Leaves — Filial Piety 
and Certain Horrors Thereof 

A S THE luncheon at the Maple Club was my 
Zjk first meal in the Japanese style I had not 
-4_ A. realized the volume of such a repast. I 
ate too much of the first few courses, and as a result 
found myseK unable to partake of the last two thirds 
of the feast. The amount of food was simply 
stupendous. I might have realized this in advance, 
and governed myself accordingly, had I looked at 
the menu. But I failed to do so until driven to it 
by my surprise as course after course was served. 
This was the bill of fare: 

FIRST TABLE 

Hors d'(Euvres — Vegetables 
Soup — terrapin with quail eggs and onions 

Baked fish with sea-hedgehog paste 

Raw fish with horseradish and euirema root 

Fried prawns and deep-sea eels 

Duck, fishrcake and vegetables in egg soup, steamed 

Roast duck with relishes 

When this much had been served the nesans 
took up the little tables from in front of us and 

127 



128 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

went trooping out of the room. As I had ah'eady 
eaten what amounted to about three normal dinners, 
I concluded that the meal was over, but not so. In 
they came again bearing other little lacquered tables 
of the same pattern as the first, but slightly smaller; 
whereupon, as it seemed to me, an entire second 
luncheon was served. The menu was as follows: 

SECOND TABLE 

Horsd'ceuvres — Vegetables 

Fish consomme 

Grilled eels 

Rice 

Pickled vegetables 

Fruits 

I am told that indigestion is a prevalent ailment 
of the Japanese, and as regards prosperous persons 
who do no hard physical work I can readily be- 
lieve it. The toihng coolie is the •only man in Japan 
who might reasonably be expected to digest an 
elaborate Japanese meal, and he, of course, never 
gets one, but subsists almost entirely upon a diet of 
rice and fish. 

Though some Japanese dishes are found palatable 
by Americans there are many things we miss in the 
Japanese cuisine. It lacks variety. Breakfast, lunch- 
eon, and dinner are composed of about the same 
dishes. The divers well-cooked vegetables which 
form such an important part of our diet are entirely 
absent from theirs, nor do they have stewed fruits, 
salads, sweets, or the numerous meats to which we 
are accustomed. 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 129 

Of their best-known table delicacies it may be said 
that grilled eels with rice are very good; that the pink 
fish, the flesh of which is eaten raw, is pleasing to the 
eye and by no means unpalatable when dipped in the 
accompanying shoyu, a brown sauce not unlike 
Worcestershire, made from soy beans; that though 
they have no cream soups, some of their soups are 
pleasant to the taste, albeit they have the pecuharity 
of being either thin and watery on the one hand, or 
of the consistency of custard on the other; that 
bamboo shoots are rather tough, lily roots sweet 
and succulent, and quail eggs delicious. The 
Japanese, by the way, domesticate the quail for its 
eggs, regard the cow not as a milch animal but as a 
beast of burden, and cultivate the cherry tree not for 
its fruit but for its flower. 

The diet of ancient Japan was even less varied than 
that of to-day, for more than a thousand years ago 
the Japanese became vegetarians, and for some cen- 
turies thereafter adhered scrupulously to the Buddhis- 
tic injunction against kiUing living creatures. 
For several hundred years they even abjured fish, 
but by degrees they have faUen away from the strict 
observance of the vegetarian doctrine, until to-day 
a Japanese who is at all sophisticated wiU thoroughly 
enjoy a dinner in the European style, beef and all. 
Indeed many of those who have travelled abroad 
and acquired a taste for foreign cookery make it a 
point to have at least one of their daily meals pre- 
pared in the foreign fashion. 

Government officials or wealthy cosmopolitans 



130 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

who entertain on a large scale usually do so in the 
European manner. A banquet at the Imperial 
Hotel in Tokyo is much like a banquet in New York, 
and one at the Banl^ers' Club is even more so, except 
that the meal itself is likely to be better than at our 
banquets. To dine with a large gathering at the 
Peers' Club is like dining at some great club or 
official residence in Paris; while as for the cocktail 
hour at the Tokyo Club, I cannot imagine anything 
in the world more completely and delightfully 
international. 

An important part of the equipment for a meal in 
the pure Japanese style is a smoker's outfit, consisting 
of a tray on which stands a small urn of live charcoal, 
and a bamboo vase with a little water in it — the 
former for hghting the tobacco, the latter a receptacle 
for ashes. The native smoke is a tiny pipe, called 
a two-and-a-half -puff pipe, with a bowl as smaU as a 
child's thimble. Finely shredded Japanese tobacco 
is smoked in this pipe, which is used by men and 
women ahke, and the constant refiUing and relighting 
of it seem to figure as a part of the pleasure of 
smoking. The Japanese smoke cigarettes also, and 
cigars, but the tobacco industry of Japan, like that 
of France, is a government monopoly, with the result 
that, as in France, good cigarettes and cigars are 
difficult to obtain. 

A visit to a government tobacco factory left me 
with the impression that, from the point of view of 
management, mechanical equipment, and perhaps 
also labour conditions, the plant would compare not 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 131 

unfavourably with some large tobacco manufactories 
in our own Southern States; but as to the product 
of this factory, the best of which I sampled, I can 
pretend to no enthusiasm. Japanese tobacco goes 
well enough in the little native pipes, but it does 
not make good cigarettes or cigars, and even the 
cigarettes made of blended tobaccos, or from pure 
Virginia or Egyptian leaves, would hardly satisfy 
a critical taste. Cigars made in Japan are uniformly 
poor, like the government-made cigars of France, 
but whereas in France it is possible to buy a good 
imported Havana, I found none for sale in Japan. 
One reason for this is that the duty on cigars is 
355 per cent., so that only a milHonaire can afford 
good Havanas. 

Whether because the enormous luncheon at the 
Maple Club left me in a stupor, or because my mind 
could not adjust itself quickly to appreciation of an 
unfamihar and extremely curious art, I did not 
find myself enchanted by the shriU falsetto singing 
of the geisha musicians, or the strange sounds they 
evoked from the samisen, fife and drums, as they 
accompanied the dancers. 

The native Japanese music, with its crude five- 
tone scale, is demonstrably inferior to that of West- 
ern peoples. To the foreign ear it is unmelodious, 
even barbarous, and yet I must say for it that the 
more I heard it the more I felt in it a kind of weird 
appeal— an appeal not to the ear but to the im- 
agination. Even now, when I am far away from 



132 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

Japan, a note or two struck on a guitar, a mandolin, 
or a ukulele, in imitation of the samisen, conjures 
up vivid pictures in my mind. I see a narrow geisha 
street, with a musician seated in an upper window, 
or I get a vision of a geisha dancer arrayed in brilliant 
silks, posturing, fan in hand, against a background 
of gold screens, in the exquisitely chaste simplicity 
of a Japanese teahouse room. The sound that 
evokes the picture is not harmonious, but the picture 
itself is harmonious beyond expression. 

One thing that sometimes makes the stranger in 
Japan slow to appreciate the dancing of geisha, is 
the very fact that it is called dancing; for the term 
suggests to us a picture of Pavlowa poised hke a 
swiftly flying bird, or Genee looking like a bisque 
doll and spinning on one toe. Dancing, to us, 
means, first of all, rhythm. We look for rhythm 
in a geisha dance, and failing to find it — at least in 
the sense in which we understand the meaning of 
the word — we are baffled. It is only one more case 
of preconception as a barrier to just appreciation. 

Many travellers, and at least one author who has 
written a book on Japan, have made the mistake 
of confusing geisha with prostitutes. This is a 
gigantic error. The error is kept alive by ricksha 
coolies who, understanding that it is a common 
mistake of foreigners, often use the term "geisha 
house" as meaning an establishment of altogether 
different character. A geisha house is in fact simply 
a house in which geisha live under the charge of the 
master or mistress to whom they are bound by 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 133 

contract or indenture. Geisha are booked through 
exchanges and meet their patrons at restaurants 
or teahouses. When not on duty they are private 
citizens, and it would be considered the height of 
vulgarity for a man to call upon a geisha at the geisha 
house, however innocent the purpose of his call. 

A further reason for the erroneous idea of what a 
geisha is, lies in the fact that Western civihzation 
has no equivalent class. Geisha correspond more 
nearly to cabaret entertainers than to any other 
class we have, yet even here there is no real parallel. 
It is not customary in Japan — except in foreign- 
style hotels — to dine in public. If a man be alone 
in a hotel he dines by himself in his room, save 
that the Uttle nesans who serve him will try to make 
themselves agreeable and that the proprietor may 
do the same. Or if a man gives a luncheon or a 
dinner party at a restaurant he will have a private 
room. Therefore, under the Japanese system, there 
is never a general assemblage of persons, strangers 
to one another, who may be entertained as a body 
while they are dining. Thus the geisha is a private 
entertainer, and in order that the most desirable 
geisha may be secured it is customary to make ar- 
rangements for a luncheon or dinner several days 
in advance. This is usually done through the pro- 
prietor of the restaurant, who is told the names of the 
geisha the host desires to summon, and who notifies 
them through the local geisha exchange. 

Men who frequently lunch and dine out naturally 
become acquainted with many geisha, and have their 



134 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

preferences; and if a host knows that one of his 
guests particularly likes a certain geisha he will 
generally try to arrange to have her at his party. 

There are three classes of geisha. Those of the 
best class frequently have good incomes. They aie 
often given large presents by their wealthy patrons, 
and many of them are the mistresses of men of means, 
who sometimes take them off on week-end outings 
and spend a great deal of money on them. 

However this may be, a geisha of the first class 
is a creature of exquisite refinement of manner, and 
there is about her not the faintest suggestion of 
coarseness. She will be friendly, even pleasantly 
familiar, but never, in public, is she guilty of the 
slightest impropriety. I have been to many gay 
parties in Japan, but I have never seen a geisha or 
her patron behave in a way that would shock the 
most fastidious American lady. Naturally the 
situation is somewhat different among low-class 
Japanese and the geisha they patronize. There 
are vulgar geisha to entertain vulgar men. But 
even a low-class geisha, if sent for in an emergency 
to entertain a man of taste, will often be sufficiently 
clever to adjust herself to the situation. 

During the meal the geisha will sit before or beside 
the gentleman she is designated to entertain, chatting 
with him, amusing him and serving him with sake. 
Afterward she will join the other geisha in giving 
an entertainment, the part she takes in this depend- 
ing upon her special talent, which may be for singing, 
playing, or dancing. Pretty young geisha are most 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 135 

often dancers, while those who are older are generally 
musicians. Also there are some geisha who are 
merely bright and pleasing and who succeed without 
other accomplishments. The host, making up a 
party, selects his geisha with these various require- 
ments in mind, so that his whole company of geisha 
will be well balanced. 

Foreigners are generally most taken with the 
little dancing girls, or maiko, who are mere children, 
and who with their sweet, bright, happy httle faces, 
and their bewitchingly brilliant flowered-silk cos- 
tumes, are altogether fascinating. Once at a party 
in a great house in Tokyo I saw a score of these 
little creatures scampering down a broad flight of 
stairs, making a picture that was like nothing so 
much as a mass of autumn leaves blown by a high 
wind. 

These children are in effect apprentices who are 
being schooled in the geisha's arts. Often they are 
in this occupation because their parents have sold 
them into it as a means of raising money. With 
the older geisha it is frequently the same. The 
Japanese teaching of filial piety makes it inciunbent 
upon a daughter to become a geisha, or even a prosti- 
tute, to relieve the financial distress of her parents. 
In either case she goes under contract for a term of 
years — usually three. 

A girl who is refined, pretty, and talented can 
raise a sum in the neighbourhood of a thousand 
dollars by becoming a geisha, but if she is not suffi- 
ciently talented or attractive to be a geisha, her next 



136 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

resource is the "nightless city." The opening to 
women of professional and commercial opportunities 
should tend to improve this situation. 

I am told that geisha and the little dancing girls 
are generally kindly treated by the geisha-masters, 
and the gaiety they exhibit leads me to conclude 
that this is true. The little dancers, in particular, 
want but slight encouragement to become as playful 
as kittens. 



CHAPTER XII 

/ Entertain at a Teahouse — Folk Dances — The Sense of 
Form — The Organization of Society — Jitsuko Helps me Give 
a Party — Pretty Kokinoyou — Geisha Games — Rivalries of 
Geisha — The Cherry Dance at Kyoto — Theatre Settings — 
Unmercenary Geisha — Teahouse Romances — Restaurants, 
Cheap and Costly — Reflections on Reform 

" 'Tis pleasing to be schooled in a strange tongue 
By foreign lips and eyes. . ." 

— Byron 



r H ^ 

T 



■^HE way to see geisha and maiko to the 
best advantage is at small parties where the 
guests are well acquainted and formality can 
be to some extent cast off. I was much pleased 
when I learned enough of the ways of teahouses 
and geisha to be able to give such a party. 

My first essay as host at a Japanese dinner was 
not, however, entirely independent, since I had 
the help of a Japanese friend. It occurred at the 
charming Maruya teahouse, in the ancient town of 
Nara. 

It was at the Maruya that I first began to feel 
some real understanding and appreciation of geisha 
dancing, and I think the thing that assisted me most 
was the fact that the httle maiko executed several 
Japanese folk dances, the action of which, unlike 

137 



138 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

that of most geisha dances, was to a large extent 
self-explanatory. One of these dances represented 
clam-digging. In it the dancers held small trays 
which in pantomine they used as shovels, going 
through the motion of digging the clams out of the 
sand and throwing them into a basket. The dance 
was accompanied by a song, as was also another 
folk dance in which two of the maiko enacted the 
roles of lovers who were obliged to part because the 
mother of the girl was forcing her to marry a rich 
man. I was interested to notice in this dance that 
the gesture to indicate weeping — the holding of 
one hand in front of the eyes at a distance of two or 
three inches from them — is not taken from life, but is 
copied from the gesture of dolls in the marionette 
theatre. That is the gesture for a man. When a 
woman weeps she holds her sleeve-tab before her 
eyes, for it is a tradition that women dry their tears 
with their sleeves. When in Japanese poetry moist 
sleeves are spoken of, the figure of speech signifies 
that a woman has been weeping. 

The girls who executed the last-mentioned folk 
dance were respectively thirteen and fifteen years 
old, and they were evidently much amused by the 
passionate utterances they were obliged to deliver. 
The one who played the part of the youth — a fetching 
little creature with a roguish face — ^was unable at 
times to restrain her mirth as she recited the tragic 
and romantic lines, and her rendition of them was 
punctuated by little explosions of giggling, which 
though they cannot be said to have heightened the 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 139 

dramatic eiFect of the sad story, her audience found 
most contagious. Then with a great effort she 
would pull herself together and try to Hve down the 
mirthful outburst, lowering her voice, to imitate 
that of a man, and assuming a tragic demeanor 
which, in a creature so sweet and childish, habited 
in silken robes that made her Uke a butterfly, was 
even more amusing. 

People who follow the arts, or have a feeHng for 
them, seldom fail to appreciate geisha dancing after 
they have seen enough of it to get an imderstanding of 
what it is. This, I think, is because they generally 
have a sense of form, and as geisha dancing is a sort 
of animated tableau vivant, a sense of form is the 
one thing most essential to an appreciation of it. 

Indeed I will go further and proclaim my beHef 
that, to a visitor who would really imderstand 
Japan, a sense of form is a vital necessity. 

Japan is all form. In Japanese art even colour 
takes second place. Nor does the Japanese feeHng 
for form by any means stop where art ends. It 
permeates the entire faibric of Japanese life. The 
formal courtesy of old French society was as nothing 
to the formal courtesy of the Japanese. The whole 
life of the average Japanese is so regulated by form 
that his existence seems to progress according to a 
sort of geometrical pattern. The very nation 
itself is organized in such a way as to suggest a 
compact artistic composition. Not only every class, 
but every family and individual has an exact place 
in the structure. A friend of mine who knows Japan 



140 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

as but few foreigners do, goes so far as to say that 
the shades of difference between individuals are 
so finely drawn that no two persons in Japan are 
of exactly the same social rank, and that the precise 
position of every man in the country can be estab- 
Hshed according to the codes of Japanese formaHsm. 
Though this may be an exaggeration it expresses 
what I beheve to be essentially a truth. I visuaHze 
the social and political structure of Japan as a 
great pyramid in which the blocks are families. 
At the bottom are the submerged classes — among 
them, down in the mud of the foundation, the eta 
or pariah class. Then come layers of families 
representing the voteless masses, among which the 
merchant class was in feudal times considered the 
lowest. Next come the little taxpayers who vote, 
and these pile up and up to the place where the 
more exalted classes are superimposed upon them 
— ^for in Japan it may be said that there is practically 
no middle class. I am told that there are now 
about a million families who are descended from 
samurai. This is where the aristocracy begins. 
So the pyramid ascends. Layers of lower officials; 
layers of higher officials, layers of ex-officials, high 
and low; layers of those having decorations from 
the Government; layers of army and navy families, 
and so on to where, very near the summit, are placed 
the Genro, or elder statesmen. Above them is a 
massive block representing the Imperial Family, 
and at the very peak, is the Emperor, Head of all 
Heads of Families. 



MYSTERIOUS JAfAN 141 

My party in Nara having given me confidence, 
I gave a luncheon at the dehghtful Kanetanaka 
teahouse which overlooks a canal in the Kyobashi 
district of Tokyo. 

I cannot claim much credit for the fact that this 
party was a success, since Jitsuko, the English speak- 
ing geisha I met at my first Japanese luncheon, was 
there to help me. Jitsuko's English, I must own, 
was not perfect. Nor would I have had it so, for 
I enjoyed teaching her, and learning from her. 

"Naughty boy!" was one expression that I taught 
her, and I showed her how to accompany the phrase 
with an admonitory shake of the finger, with results 
which altogether charmed the American gentlemen 
at my luncheon. 

One of these gentlemen, a new arrival in Japan 
and consequently entirely unfamiliar with Japanese 
fare, asked Jitsuko about a certain dish that was 
set before him. 

"What is this?" he demanded, looking at it 
doubtfully. 

"That fried ears," said Jitsuko. 

" Fried ears ! " he cried. " Not really.^ " 

"Yes." 

But it was not fried ears. Jitsuko had the usuad 
trouble with her Z's and r's. She had meant to say 
"fried eels." 

Besides Jitsuko I had at my luncheon six of the 
lovely little maiko. One of them, an intelligent child 
called Shinobu — "tiptoes" — was picking up a little 
English. She sent for ink and a brush and wrote 



142 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

out for me the names of her companions. Later 
I had the names translated, getting the meaning 
of them in EngHsh — ^for geisha generally take fanci- 
ful names. They were: Kokinoyou — "little al- 
ligator"*; Akika — "scent of autumn"; Komon — 
"httle gate"; Shintama — "new ball"; and Kimi- 
chiyo, whose name was not translated for me, but 
who was the prettiest httle dancing girl I saw in all 
Japan. 

Though the Japanese idea of female loveliness 
does not generally accord with ours, I think Kimi- 
chiyo was an exception and was as lovely in native 
eyes as in those of an American, for she seemed very 
popular, and was at almost every Japanese-style 
party I attended in Tokyo. Moreover, though she 
could not have been older than sixteen, she carried 
herself with the placid confidence of an established 
belle. I have met many a lady twice or three times 
her age who had not her aplomb. 

After luncheon the maiko danced for us while 
Jitsuko and another geisha played. Then, as my 
guest of honour had not yet acquired a taste for 
geisha dancing, the programme was changed and 
Jitsuko set the little maiko to playing games. First 
they showed us how to play their great game of 
ken, but though we learned it we could not compete 
with them in playing it. They were too quick 



*"What a queer name!" a Japanese friend writes me. And he 
adds: "Yom* translation cannot be right. A little alligator might be 
taken for a mascot in America, but it could never be the name of a 
dainty little geisha, " 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 143 

for us. We pitched quoits with them — and were 
beaten. We played bottle-and-cup — and were 
beaten. And finally they introduced us to a Japan- 
ese version of "Going to Jerusalem," which they 
play with cushions instead of chairs, with the 
samisen for music. Of course they beat us at that. 
Who can sink down upon a cushion with the agihty 
of a httle Japanese girl? All in all, the Americans 
were beaten at every point — and thoroughly en- 
joyed the beating. 

I could tell a story about the president of one 
of the greatest corporations in America. He was 
at my luncheon. He is a very dignified and formida- 
ble man, and is considered able. But he can't play 
ken worth a cent. Kimi-chiyo herself said so. She 
told Jitsuko and Jitsuko told me. 

"In America he is a great man," I said. 

"He is very slow at ken," Kimi-chiyo insisted, 
unimpressed. 

"In business he is not slow," I told her. 

"Perhaps. But any one who is really clever will 
be quick at ken." 

I decided to avoid the game of ken in future. It 
shows one up. 

Between the geisha of the various great cities 
there exists a gentle rivalry. Kyoto, for example, 
concedes a certain vivacity to the geisha of the 
five or six leading districts of Tokyo, but it insists 
that the Kyoto geisha have unrivalled complexions, 
and that the famous Gion geisha of Kyoto are more 



144 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

perfect in their grace and charm than any others in 
Japan. This they account for by the fact that the 
Gion geisha have a long and distinguished history, 
and that there is a geisha school in Kyoto, whereas 
the Tokyo geisha have no school but are trained by 
older geisha under the supervision of the master of 
the individual geisha-house to which they are at- 
tached. Similarly the Tokyo geisha consider those 
of Kyoto rather "slow," and regard the Yokohama 
geisha as distinctly inferior. Once I asked a Tokyo 
geisha to give a dance of which I had heard, but 
she replied with something like a shrug that the 
dance in question was given by the Yokohama 
geisha, wherefore, she and her associates did not 
perform it. 

So far as I know there is not to be seen in Tokyo 
or Yokohama any large geisha show, resembling 
a theatrical entertainment, such as one may see in 
Kyoto in cherry-blossom season, or at the Embujo 
Theatre in Osaka every May. These exhibitions 
are delightful things to see, the Cherry Dance of 
Kyoto, in particular, being famous throughout 
Japan. The buildings in which they are held are 
impressive. The one in Kyoto was built especially 
for the Cherry Dance, and the interior of it, while 
in a general way hke a large theatre, is modelled after 
the style of an old Japanese palace. The geisha 
dancers and musicians are splendidly trained and 
the costumes are magnificent. 

Rapid changes of scene are made in these theatres 
by means unfamiliar to American theatre-goers. 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 145 

As in our playhouses, flies and drops are sometimes 
hoisted upward when a scene is being changed, but 
quite as frequently they sink down through slots in 
the stage floor. Also, in the dimness of a "dark 
change" one sees whole settings going through 
extraordinary contortions, folding up in ways 
unknown in our theatres, or turning inside-out, 
or upside-down. One feels that their stage is 
generally equipped with less perfect mechanical 
and lighting devices than ours, but that a great 
deal of ingenuity is shown in the actual building 
of scenery. One of the most astonishing things I 
ever saw in any theatre was the sudden disap- 
pearance of a back-drop at the Embujo in Osaka. 
The bottom of this drop began all at once to contract; 
then the whole funnel-shaped mass shot down 
through a small aperture in the floor, like a silk 
handkerchief passing swiftly through a ring. 

The most perfect illusion of depth and distance 
I ever saw on a stage was in one scene of the Kyoto 
Cherry Dance. From the front of the house the 
scene appeared to go back and back incredibly. 
Nor could I make out where the back-drop met the 
stage, so skilfully was the painted pictm^e blended 
with the built-up scenery. When the performance 
was over I inspected this setting and found that the 
scenic artist had achieved his result by a most ela- 
borately complete contraction of the hues of per- 
spective, not only in the painted scenery but in 
objects on the stage. A row of tables running from 
the foothghts to the rear of the stage had been 



146 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

built in diminishing scale, and rows of Japanese 
lanterns, apparently exactly alike, became in reality 
smaller and smaller as they reached back from the 
proscenimn, so that the whole perspective was ex- 
aggerated. The stage of this theatre was not in 
fact so deep as that of the New York Hippodrome 
or the Century Theatre. 

At the geisha dance in Osaka I asked what pay 
the hundred or more geisha musicians and dancers 
received, and was told that they are not paid at all. 
There are two reasons for this. First, it is regarded 
as the duty of all geisha to celebrate the spring with 
music and dancing; and second, they consider it an 
honour to be selected for these festivals, since only the 
most skilful members of their sisterhood are chosen. 

Geisha, you see, are not entirely mercenary. 
When two or three of them go off for a Kttle outing 
together, or when they shop, they spend money 
freely; and there are stories of geisha who pay their 
own fees in order to meet their impecunious lovers 
at teahouses. 

In Japanese romances the geisha is a favourite 
figure. A popular theme for stories concerning her 
is that of her love affair with a student whose family 
disown him because of his infatuation. The geisha 
sweetheart then supports him while he completes 
his education. He graduates brilliantly, securing 
an important appointment under the government, 
and rewards the girl's devotion by making her his 
bride. Or if the story be tragic — and the Japanese 
have a strong taste for tragedy — the student's 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 147 

family is endeavouring to force him into a brilliant 
match, wherefore the self-sacrificing geisha, whom 
he really loves, takes her own life, so that she may 
not stand in the way of his success. 

There was a time a generation or two ago when 
Japanese aristocrats occasionally took geisha for 
their wives, much as young EngHsh noblemen 
used to marry chorus girls. But those things have 
changed in Japan and it is a long time since a man 
of position has made such a match. The plain 
truth is that, however justly or unjustly, the geisha 
class is not respected. They are victims of the 
curious law which operates the world over to make 
us always a httle bit contemptuous of those whose 
occupation it is to amuse us. Moreover, geisha 
are not as a rule highly educated, and it is said that 
this fact makes it difficult for them to adjust them- 
selves to an elevated place in the social scale. 

Thus it comes about that, when geisha marry, 
their husbands are as a rule business men or mer- 
chants on a modest scale. 

Yuki our treasured maid, had a friend who became 
a geisha, but who retired from the profession through 
the matrimonial portal. 

"She smart girl," said Yuki. "She too head to 
be geisha." 

"Why did she become one, then?" I asked. 

"Her family have great trouble. Her father 
need fifteen hundred yen right off. Must have. 
So she be geisha. But after while she meet rich 
man in teahouse, and he pay for her, so she don't 



148 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

have to be geisha any more, and they get married." 
Some excellent people I met in Japan — ^Americans 
imbued with the spirit of reform — objected strongly 
to the geisha system, contending that it is a barrier 
to happy domesticity. They felt that so long as 
there are geisha in Japan the average Japanese 
husband will have them at his parties, and will 
continue his present practice of leaving his wife 
at home when he goes out for a good time. I sup- 
pose this is true. Undoubtedly, to the Japanese 
wife, the geisha is the "other woman." And as 
is so often the case with the "other woman," in 
whatever land you find her, the geisha has certain 
strategic advantages over the wife. Like good 
wives everywhere, the Japanese wife is concerned 
with himidrum things — the children, housekeeping, 
the family finances — the things which often irritate 
and bore a husband if harped upon. But the cir- 
cumstances in which a husband meets a geisha are 
genial and gay. Her business is to make him forget 
his cares and enjoy himself. 

The expense of the geisha system is also urged 
against it. To dine at a first-class teahouse, with 
geisha, costs as much as, or more than, to dine elab- 
orately at the most expensive New York hotels. It 
is well for strangers in Japan to understand this, 
since they often jimap to the conclusion that the 
Japanese teahouse, which looks so simple — so 
dehghtfully simple! — ^by comparison with the gold 
and marble grandeur of a great American hotel 
dining room, must necessarily be cheaper. I re- 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 149 

member a case in which some Americans, newly 
arrived in Tokyo, were entertained in the native 
manner by a Japanese gentleman, and felt that they 
were returning the courtesy in royal style when 
they invited him to dine with them at their hotel. 
Yet in point of fact their hotel dinner-party cost 
less than haK as much per plate as his Japanese 
dinner had cost. While one does not value courtesy 
by what it costs, it is important not to undervalue 
it on any basis whatsoever. 

There is, of course, a great variation in the cost 
of meals in teahouses and restaurants, and the fact 
that those which are inexpensive look exactly like 
those which are expensive helps to confuse the 
stranger. A great deal may be saved if one does 
without geisha. Also there are very agreeable 
restaurants in which the guest may cook his own 
food in a pan over a brazier which is brought into 
the dining room. 

This chafing-fish style of cooking is said to have 
been introduced by a missionary who became tired 
of Japanese food and formed the habit of preparing 
his own meals as he travelled about. Now, however, 
it has come to be considered typically Japanese. 

There are two names for cooking in this simple 
fashion. The word torinabe is derived from tori, 
a bird, and nabe, a pot or kettle; and gyunabe from 
a combination of the word for a pot with gyu, which 
means a cow, or beef. The Suyehiro restaurants, 
having three branches in Tokyo, are famous for 
torinabe, as well as for an affectation of elegant 



150 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 




A bill from the Kanetanaka teahouse, with items of ¥ 26.30 for 
food, sake, etc., and ¥ 27.80 for "six sake-servers (geisha) tips to 
geisha and their attendants." 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 151 

simplicity and crudity in chinaware. A good place 
for the gyunabe is the Mikawaya restaurant in the 
Yotsuya section, not far from the palace of the 
Crown Prince. 

To be more specific about prices, I gave an excel- 
lent luncheon of this kind for four, at one of the 
Suyehiro restaurants, at a cost of about four dollars 
and a half, whereas a luncheon for the same number 
of persons, with geisha, at a fashionable teahouse, 
which looked just about like the other restaurant, 
cost thirty dollars, and a dinner for eight with 
geisha, came to fifty-three. All tips are however 
included on the teahouse bill. One does not pay 
at the time, but receives the bill later, regular patrons 
of a teahouse usually settling their accounts quarterly. 

Adversaries of the geisha system informed me with 
the air of imparting scandal, that one sixth of all 
the money spent in Japan goes to geisha and things 
connected with geisha, presumably meaning restaur- 
ants, teahouses, sake and the like. 

"A reformer," says Don Marquis, the Sage 
of Nassau Street, "is a dog in the manger who won't 
sin himself and won't let any one else sin comfort- 
ably." That is a terrible thing to say. I wouldn't 
say such a thing. It is always better in such cases 
to quote some one else. But I will say this much: 
If I were a reformer I should begin work at home — 
not in Japan. I should join the great movement, 
already so well started, for making the United 
States the purest and dullest country in the world. 
I should work with those who are attempting to 



152 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

accomplish this result entirely by legislation. But 
instead of trying, as they are now trying, to bring 
about the desired end by means of quantities of 
little pious laws covering quantities of httle impious 
subjects, I should work for a blanket law covering 
everything — one great, sweeping law requiring all 
American citizens to be absolutely pure and good, 
not only in action but in thought. I assume that, 
if such a law were passed, everybody would abide 
by it, but in order to make it easier for them to do 
so I should abolish restaurants, theatres, motion 
pictures, dancing, baseball, talking-machines, art, 
literature, tobacco, candy, and soda-water. I should 
put dictographs in every home and have the police 
listen in on all conversations. Light-heartedness 
I should make a misdemeanor, and frivolity a crime. 
Then, when our whole country had reached a 
state of perfection that was absolutely morbid, I 
should consider my work here done, and should 
move to Japan. But I should not stop being a 
reformer. Assuredly no! I should start at once 
to improve things over there. Take for instance 
this report that one sixth of all the money spent 
goes to geisha and such things. I should try first 
of all to remedy that situation. One sixth of the 
national expenditure represents a vast amount of 
money. Think of its being spent on good times! 
Such a lot of money! Still it isn't quite enough. 
A quarter or a third would be better than a sixth. 
It would make things perfect. Not being a Japan- 
ese wife, I should advocate that. 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 153 

I see but one serious objection to this plan. Should 
Japan become any more attractive than it now is, 
the Japanese might feel forced to pass exclusion 
laws. If they were to do so I hope they would not 
discriminate against people of any one race. I 
hope they would bar out everybody — not Americans 
alone. Because if they were to bar us out and at 
the same time allow the riffraff of Europe to come in, 
that might hurt our feelings. It isn't so hard to hurt 
our feelings, either. We are a proud and sensitive 
race, you know. Yes, indeed ! It is largely because 
we are so proud and sensitive that we treat the 
Japanese with such scant courtesy. That's the 
way pride and sensitiveness sometimes work. Of 
course the Japanese are proud and sensitive, too. 
But we can't be bothered about that. We haven't 
the time. We are too busy being proud and sensi- 
tive ourselves. 




CHAPTER XIII 

Commercialized Vice — The Yoshiwara — An Establishment 
Therein — Famous Old Geisha — A ''Male Geisha'' — The 
Stately Shogi — They Show Us Courtesy — The Merits of the 
Shogi — Kyoto's Shimahara—The Shogi in Romance — The 
Tale of the Fair Yoshino 

OME Americans are horrified because com- 
mercialized vice is officially recognized in 
Japan. The thought is unpleasant. But I 
am by no means sure that, since this form of vice 
does exist everywhere in the world, the policy 
of recognizing and regulating it is not the best 
policy. 

The Japanese work, apparently, upon the theory 
that, as this evil cannot be stamped out of existence, 
the next best thing is to stamp it as far as possible 
out of the public consciousness. This is done by 
segregating the women called shogi in certain speci- 
fied districts, and keeping them off the city streets. 

Whatever may be urged for or against this system 
it enables me to say of Japan what I am not able 
to say of my own country or any other country 
I have visited: namely, that in Japan I never saw a 
street- walker. 

The Tokyo district called the Yoshiwara is en- 
tered by a wide road spanned by an arch. Within, 

154 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 155 

the streets look much hke other Japanese streets, 
save that they are brightly lighted and that some 
of the buildings are large and rather ornate. First 
we went to a teahouse of the Yoshiwara, and I was 
readily able to perceive that the geisha in this tea- 
house were of a lower grade than those I had hitherto 
seen. Their faces were less intelligent, and they 
lacked the perfect grace and charm of their more 
successful sisters. 

From the sounds about us it was apparent that 
a Yoshiwara teahouse is a place for drinking and 
more or less wild merrymaking. 

Proceeding down the street from this teahouse 
we passed through orderly crowds and presently 
came to the district's most elaborate establishment. 
It was a large three-story building of white glazed 
brick, with an inner courtyard containing a pretty 
garden. To enter this place was like entering a 
very fine Japanese hotel. 

In the corridor hung a row of lacquered sticks 
each bearing a number in the Chinese character. 
There were, I think, about thirty of these sticks, 
and each represented a shogi. The number-one 
shogi was the most sought-after; number two ranked 
next, and so on. We were shown by the proprietress 
and some maids to a large matted room on the 
second floor, where sake, cakes and fruit were served 
to us. Then there appeared three geisha of a most 
unusual kind. They were women fifty-five or 
sixty years of age, rather large, with faces genial, 
amusing, and respectable. These I was told were 



156 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

geisha with a great local reputation for boisterous 
wit. My Japanese friends were thereafter kept 
in a continual state of mirth, and though I could 
not understand what the old geisha were saying, 
their droll manner was so infectious that I, too, was 
amused. Presently they were joined by a man with 
the face of a comedian. He was described to me as 
a "male geisha." That is, he was an entertainer. 
He sang, told comic stories and showed real ability 
as a mimic. 

This entertainment lasted for the better part of 
an hour. Then the mistress of the house came in 
with the air of one having something important 
to reveal. At a word from her the entertainers 
drew back and seated themselves on cushions at one 
side of the room. There was an impressive silence. 
Slowly, a sliding screen door of black lacquer and 
gold paper slipped back, moved by an unseen hand. 
We watched the open doorway. 

Presently appeared the figure of a woman. She 
did not look in our direction, but moved out into 
the room as if it had been a stage and she an actress. 
Her step was slow and stately, and she was arrayed 
in a brilHant robe of red satin, heavily quilted, 
and embroidered with large elaborate designs. 
This was the number-one shogi. Her costume and 
bearing were magnificent, but her face was expres- 
sionless and not at all beautiful. 

When she was well within the room the number- 
two shogi, dressed in the same style, moved in behind 
ber, and followed with the same stately tread. 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 157 

In procession they walked across the room, turned 
slowly, trailed the hems of their wadded kimonos 
back across the matting, and made an exit by the 
door at which they had entered. Then the door 
slipped shut. 

The chatter began once more, but after a few 
minutes we were again silenced. For the second 
time the door opened and the two women appeared. 
They were now arrayed in purple kimonos, quilted 
and embroidered like the first. Again they made a 
dignified progress across the room and back; again 
they disappeared. 

That was the end of the inspection. By now 
we should, in theory, have been entranced with one 
or the other of the shogi we had seen. It was time 
to go. But as the Japanese gentleman whom I 
had asked to bring me to this place was a man of 
consequence, an especial courtesy was shown us 
ere we departed. In ordinary circumstances we 
should not have seen the two women again, but now 
they unbent so far as to come in and kneel upon 
the floor beside us— for we had checked our shoes 
at the entrance, and were seated Japanese-fashion 
upon silk cushions. 

My Japanese friends attempted to chat with the 
shogi, but evidently the latter did not shine in the 
arts of conversation. The talk was grave and un- 
mistakably perfunctory, and after a little while 
the two arose, bowed profoundly, with a sort of 
grandeur, and trailed their wondrous robes out of 
the room. It was like seeing in the life a pair of 



158 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

courtesans from a colour-print by Utamaro. As 
they went I wondered whether, in the beginning, 
they had striven to be geisha instead of shogi, but 
had been forced to the Yoshiwara by reason of their 
lack of talent for music and conversation. 

Before we left I was shown some of the other 
rooms of this huge house, including those of several 
of the women. The woodwork was like light brown 
satin and the matting glistened almost as though 
it were lacquered. There were some kakemono 
and fine padnted screens with old-gold backgrounds, 
and in the women's rooms were cabinets and dressing- 
stands lacquered red and gold. The dressing-stands 
were of a height to suit one squatting on the floor. 
It was as though the top section of one of our dressing 
tables were set upon the floor — a mirror with small 
drawers at either side. 

The mistress and her maids accompanied us to 
the street door when we departed. They made 
profound obeisances, and the mistress declared her 
appreciation of the great honour we had paid her 
by visiting her establishment. My Japanese friends 
rephed in kind. The whole affair was conducted 
with a fine sense of ceremony. 

As for the three elderly geisha, they took another 
way of complimenting us. Instead of making 
ceremonious speeches they continued to be gay 
and amusing, but they did something which, when 
geisha do it, is considered a mark of high respect. 
They left the place with us, accompanying us as far 
as the gate of the Yoshiwara. One of them, a 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 159 

jolly old creature, with a fine, strong hmnorous 
face, linked arms with me as we walked along, and 
conversed with me in English. Perhaps the word 
"conversed" implies too much. Her entire English 
vocabulary consisted of the words: "All right," 
but she repeated the expression frequently and with 
changing intonations which gave a sort of variety. 

It was a strange evening, and the strangest part 
of it was the absence of vulgarity. I had seen nothing 
that the most fastidious woman could not have 
seen. 

As to what treatment is accorded the shogi them- 
selves I cannot say. Certainly they did not have 
the air of being happy. Almost all of them are 
there because of poverty, and it is said that all live 
in the hope that some man will become fond of them 
and buy them out of the life of the joroya. This I 
believe occasionally happens. It should be added 
that, under the Japanese law, contracts by which 
women sell themselves, or are sold by others into 
this life, are not valid. It may further be added 
that all authorities on Japan seem to be in accord 
with Chamberlain who says that "the fallen women 
of Japan are, as a class, much less vicious than 
their representatives in Western lands, being neither 
drunken nor foul-mouthed." They also have a 
high reputation for honesty. 

The name Yoshiwara is not a generic term, 
though strangers sometimes use it as if it were, 
speaking of "a Yoshiwara." Similar districts in 
other cities are known by other names — as, for 



160 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

example, the historic Shimabara, in Kyoto, which 
dates back about four centuries. 

Like the Yoshiwara, the Shimabara has been 
moved from time to time, with a view to keeping 
it away from the heart of the city. History records 
that Hideyoshi caused the district to be uprooted 
and transplanted, and leyasu, the first Tokugowa 
shogun, did the same, on the ground that it was too 
near the palace and the business centre. 

I find some odd items in a book giving the history of 
the Shimabara. It is said that in the old days only 
ronin — samurai acknowledging no overlord — ^were 
given charters to operate resorts in the Shimabara, 
and that court gentlemen visiting this quarter were 
required to wear white garments. There is also 
the story of a city official who used to meet now 
and then upon the streets of Kyoto a beautiful 
woman riding in a palanquin. It was his custom 
to salute her respectfully, for he thought her a court 
lady. But one day, upon inquiry, he learned that 
she was a courtesan, whereupon he became indignant, 
and caused the Shimabara quarter to be again re- 
moved, placing it still farther away from the city's 
heart. 

There is some evidence that in feudal Japan 
the most admired courtesans were persons of more 
consequence than those of to-day. In olden times, 
for example, the Shimabara women were considered 
to rank above geisha, whereas now the situation is 
decidedly the reverse. 

The stories of certain famous women of the ancient 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 161 

Shimabara are still remembered, and are favourites 
with writers of romances. One quaint tale tells 
of a beautiful girl named Tokuko, the daughter of a 
ronin. When her father and her mother died, leaving 
her penniless, she went into the Shimabara. Here, 
because of her grace, she became known as Uki-fune 
*' floating ship." But she wrote a poem about the 
cherry blossoms at Mt. Yoshino, in Yamato Pro- 
vince, a place which for more than ten centuries has 
been noted for these blooms, and her poem was so 
much admired that she herself came to be called 
Yoshino. 

A rich man's son fell in love with this girl and 
married her, but when his father learned what had 
been her occupation he disowned the youth. The 
young couple were however courageous. In a 
tiny cottage they lived a happy and romantic life. 

One day it happened that the father, caught in a 
heavy rainstorm, asked shelter in a little house at 
the roadside. Here he found a beautiful young 
woman playing exquisitely upon the harp-like 
musical instrument called the koto. She welcomed 
him charmingly, made him comfortable, served 
him tea. When the storm had passed the old man 
thanked her for her hospitality and departed. 
But he had been so struck with her beauty and 
grace that he made inquiries about her. 

"Ah," exclaimed the one of whom he asked, 
"she is none other than Yoshino, wife of your disin- 
herited son!" 

Upon hearing this the father relented. He sent 



162 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

for the young couple, took them to Hve in his own 
mansion, and directed the daughter-in-law to resume 
her original name, Tokuko — which means "virtue." 

However, I have noticed that in Japan and all 
other lands, romantic stories making heroines of 
courtesans have to be dated pretty far back. The 
Uving courtesan is but rarely regarded as a romantic 
figure. She is like a piece of common glass. 

But a piece of common glass, buried long enough 
in certain kinds of soil, acquires iridescence. This 
iridescence is not actually in the glass, but exists 
in a patine which gradually adheres to it. Under 
a little handling it will flake off. 

I suspect that it is much the same with famous 
courtesans the world over. When, after having 
been buried for a hundred years or so, they are, so 
to speak, dug up by novelists and playwrights, there 
adheres to them a beautiful iridescent patine. 

It is best, perhaps, to refrain from scratching 
the patine lest we find out what is really underneath. 




It takes two hours to do a geisha's hair, but the coiffure, 
once accomphshed, lasts several days 



CHAPTER XIV 

Japan and Italy— The Sense of Beauty—Poetry—Japanese 
Poems by an American Woman— A Poem on a Kimono — 
Garden Ornaments— Garden Parties and Gifts— The Four 
Periods of Landscape Gardening— The Volcanic Principle 
in Gardens 

T IS interesting to observe that the two races 
in which highly speciahzed artistic feehng is 
ahnost universal have, despite their antipodal 
positions on the globe, many common problems 
and one common blessing. Both Japan and Italy 
are poor and overpopulated, both are handicapped 
by a shortage of arable land and natm-al resources, 
both lack an adequate supply of food and raw 
materials for manufacturing, both are mountainous, 
both are afflicted by earthquakes; but both are 
endowed with the peculiar, passionate beauty of 
landscape which is nature's compensation to volcanic 
countries— a beauty suggesting that of some vivid 
and ungoverned woman, brilliant, erratic, fascinating 
dangerous. 

Where Nature shows herself a great temperamental 
artist, her children are hkely to be artists, too. 
As almost all Italians have a highly developed sense 
of melody, so almost all Japanese possess in a re- 
markable degree the artist's sense of form. 

163 



164 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

One day in Tokio I fell to discussing these matters 
with a venerable art collector, wearing silks and 
sandals. 

"What," he asked me, "are the most striking 
examples of artistic feeling that you have noticed in 
Japan?" 

I told him of two things that I had seen, each in 
itself unimportant. One was a well- wheel. The well 
was in a yard beside a lovely little farmhouse, one 
story high, with walls of clay and timber, and with a 
thick thatched roof, upon the ridge of which a row 
of purple iris grew. There was a dainty bamboo 
fence around the farmyard, with flowering shrubs 
behind it, and a cherry tree in blossom. The well- 
house was thatched, and the pulley-wheel beneath 
the thatch seemed to focus the entire composition. 
With us such a wheel would have been a thing 
of rough cast-iron, merely something for a rope 
to run over; but this wheel had been fondly imagined 
before it was created. Its spokes were not straight 
and ugly, but branched near the rim, curving 
gracefully into it in such a way as to form the out- 
lines of a cherry-blossom. It was a work of art. 

My other item was a little copper kettle. I saw 
it in a penitentiary. It belonged to a prisoner, and 
every prisoner in that portion of the institution 
had one like it. The striking thing about it was 
that it was an extremely graceful little kettle, 
embellished in relief with a beautiful design. It, 
too, was a work of art, and there was to me something 
pathetic in the evidence it gave that even in this 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 165 

grim place the claims of beauty were not entirely 
ignored. 

These trifling observations seemed to please my 
friend, the art collector. 

"But," said he, "I think our national love of the 
beautiful is perhaps most strongly exhibited in our 
feehng for outdoor beauty — our pilgrimages to 
spots famous for their scenery, our delight in the 
cherry-blossom season, the wistaria season, the 
chrysanthemum season, and by no means least in 
our gardens." 

Undoubtedly he was right. The feeling for nature 
among his countrymen is general, mystical, poetic. 
Almost all Japanese write poetry. The poems 
of many emperors, empresses, and statesmen are 
widely known; and among the most celebrated 
Japanese poems those to Nature in her various 
aspects are by far the most numerous. 

Let me here digress briefly to mention the interest- 
ing custom of Uta Hajime, or Opening of Imperial 
Poems, a court function dating from the ninth 
century. 

Each December the Imperial Household announces 
subjects for poems which may be submitted anony- 
mously to the Imperial Bureau of Poems, in con- 
nection with the celebration of the New Year. 
The poems are examined by the bureau's experts, 
who select the best, to be read to the Imperial Family. 

The choice for the year 1921 was made from seven- 
teen thousand poems sent from aU parts of the Em- 



166 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

pire, and when announcement was made of the names 
of those whose poems were read at the Court, it was 
discovered that, among them was an American lady, 
Frances Hawkes Burnett, wife of Col. Charles Bur- 
nett, mihtary attache of the American Embassy at 
Tokyo. Mrs. Burnett thus attains the unique dis- 
tinction of being the only foreign woman ever to have 
won Imperial approval with a poem in the Japanese 
language. 

It is interesting, in this connection, to remark that 
the lady is a grand-niece of the late Dr. Francis 
Lister Hawkes, of New York, who accompanied 
Commodore Perry to Japan, and was Perry's colla- 
borator in the writing of the official record of the 
voyage, published under the title, "The Narrative 
of the Expedition of an American Squadron." 

But to return to my friend the art collector. 

"Speaking of poetry and the love of Nature," 
said he, "have you noticed the kimono of our host's 
daughter?" 

(We were strolling in a lovely private garden as 
we talked.) 

I had noticed it. It was a beautiful costume of soft 
black silk, the hem, in front, adorned with a design 
of cherry-blossoms and an inscription in the always 
decorative Chinese character. 

"Do you know what the inscription is.^" he asked. 

I did not. 

" It is a poem of her own," he explained; and pres- 
ently, when in our stroll we caught up with the 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 167 

young lady, he made me a literal translation, which 
might be done over into English verse as follows: 

Farewell, Capital! I grieve 
Thy lovely cherry-blooms to leave. 
But now to Kioto must X fare 
To view the cherry-blossoms there. 

We fell to talking of Japanese gardens. 

*'You must see some of our fine gardens," he 
said, "before you leave Japan." 

I mentioned some I had already seen — the gardens 

of the Crown Prince, the Prime Minister, Marquis 

Okuma, Viscount Shibusawa, Baron Furukawa, 
and others. 

"But do you understand our theory of the gar- 
den.3" 

I told him what little I then knew: that flowers 
are not essential to a garden in Japan; that, where 
used, they are generally set apart in beds, and re- 
moved when they have ceased to bloom; that because 
of the skill of the Japanese in transplanting large 
trees a garden of ancient appearance may be made 
in few years; that boundaries are artfully planted 
out, so that some houses, standing on a few acres 
of ground in great cities, appear to be surrounded 
by forests; that small garden lakes are sometimes 
so arranged as to suggest that they are only arms 
of large bodies of water concealed from view by 
wooded headlands; and that optical illusions are 
often employed to make gardens seem much larger 
than they are, this being accomplished by a cunning 



168 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

scaling down in the size of the more remote hillocks, 
trees, and shrubs, increasing the perspective. 

Also, I had seen examples of the kare sensui school 
of landscape gardening — waterless lakes and streams, 
their beds delineated in sand, gravel, and selected 
pebbles, and their banks set off by great water- 
worn stones brought from elsewhere, and by trees 
and shrubs carefully trained to droop toward the 
imaginary water — ^water the more completely sug- 
gested by stepping-stones and arched bridges reach- 
ing out to Httle islands, with stone lanterns standing 
among dwarf pines. 

I knew, too, of the fondness of the Japanese for 
minor buildings in their gardens. Thus in the 
garden of Viscount Shibusawa, there is an ancient 
Korean teahouse of very striking architecture; 
in that of Dr. Takuma Dan, General Manager of 
the vast Mitsui interests, a farmhouse several cen- 
turies old ; in that of Baron Okura, a famous museimi 
of Chinese and Japanese antiquities and art works; 
and in the gardens of Baron Furukawa and Baron 
Sumitomo, smaller private museums. Tucked away 
in the corner of one garden near Kobe I had even 
seen a little factory in which the finest wireless 
cloisonne was being made, the owner of that garden 
having a deep interest in this art and using the pro- 
ductions of his artist-workmen to give as presents 
to his friends. And of course in many gardens I 
had seen houses built especially for the cha-no-yu, 
or Tea Ceremony. 

Moreover, I had been to garden parties at some 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 169 

of which luncheons were served under marquees 
of bamboo and striped canvas, while at others 
were offered entertainments consisting of geisha- 
dancing and juggling. At such parties souvenirs 
are always given — fans and kakemono painted by 
artists on the premises, or bits of pottery which, after 
being painted, are glazed and fired, and still warm 
from the kiln, presented to the guests. 

"Yes, yes," said my venerable friend, "you 
have seen a good deal; but as to the history and 
theory of our gardens, what do you know.^^" 

"Very little," I admitted, and asked him to 
enlighten me. 

Japanese landscape gardening began twelve hun- 
dred years ago, when the Emperor Shomu, in resi- 
dence at Nara, sent for a Chinese monk who was 
famed for his artistry and ordered him to beautify 
the ancient capital. This the monk accomplished 
chiefly by cutting out avenues among the lofty 
trees which to this day make Nara not only a place 
of supreme lovehness, but one rich in the aroma 
of antiquity. Thus came the first period of land- 
scape gardening in Nippon, the Tempyo period. 

Five and a half centuries ago the second period 
began when, in the terrain surrounding the Kin- 
kakuji Temple at Kyoto, gardens containing lakes, 
rocks, and gold-pavilioned islands were constructed 
in resemblance to the natural scenery near the mouth 
of the Yangtse River in China. 

The third period is best represented by the gardens 



170 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

of the arsenal in Tokyo. These were made three 
hundred years ago by a Chinese master named 
Shunsui, who was brought to Japan for the purpose 
by the Lord of Mito, brother of the shogun who at 
that time ruled Japan. In order to get water for 
this park a canal thirty miles long was constructed, 
and this same canal later supplied water to the city 
of Yedo, as Tokyo was then called. 

The current period is the fourth, and it is the 
aim of the present-day masters to combine in their 
work all the fine points of the preceding periods. 
This development is largely due to the ease of modern 
transportation, which has enabled the landscape 
gardeners of our time to travel widely and become 
familiar with the best work of their distinguished 
predecessors and the finest natural scenery. For 
instance, the Shiobara region, in northern Japan, 
a district famous for its lovely little corners, has 
been the inspiration for many modern gardens. 

"And now," said my learned friend as we paused 
in a little shelter of bamboo and thatch, overlooking 
the corner of a lake bordered with curiously formed 
rocks and flowering shrubs, "I will tell you the great 
secret of this art; for of course you understand that 
with us landscape gardening is definitely placed as 
one of the fine arts." He paused for a moment, then 
continued: "The one sound principle for making 
a garden wherever water is used is what may be 
called the volcanic principle. That is to say, 
the artist in landscape gardening should go for his 




Mrs. Charles Burnett in a 15th-Century Japanese Court 
costume. Mrs. Burnett's poems written in Japanese have 
received Imperial recognition 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 171 

themes to places of volcanic origin; for in such places 
the greatest natural beauty is found. 

"And why? First of all, you have hills of in- 
teresting contours, made by eruptions. Then you 
have mountain lakes which form in the beds of ex- 
tinct volcanoes. Our famous Lake Chuzenji, above 
Nikko, for example. From these lakes the water 
overflows, making splendid falls, like those of Kegon, 
which empty out of Lake Chuzenji. Below the 
falls you have a torrent rushing down a rocky valley, 
like the River Daiya, which flows from the Kegon 
Falls past Nikko, where it is spanned by the famous 
red-lacquered bridge. There is the basis for your 
entire garden composition. 

"But you must also remember that volcanic 
outpourings make rich soil. This soil, thrown into 
the air by volcanic explosions, settles in the crevices 
of rocks. Pines take root in it. But in some places 
the pocket of soil is small; wherefore the roots of 
the pine cannot spread, and the tree becomes a 
dwarf, gnarled and picturesque. Again, on the 
hillsides the rich soil makes great trees grow, with 
rich shrubbery and verdure beneath them. The 
torrent completes the landscape effect by sculpturing 
the rocks into fascinating forms. In that combin- 
ation you have every element required. Reproduce 
it in miniature, and your garden is made." 



CHAPTER XV 

/ Acquire Vanity — / Meet a Wise Man — The Distate for 
Boasting — Imperial Traditions — The First Ambassadors 
and Consequent Embarrassments — Trappings of Rank — 
/ Display My Knowledge — And Come a Cropper — The 
Beauties of Calm 

^ I ^HE garden theory of my friend the art 
I collector, so Japanese in its completeness, 

JL charmed and satisfied me. 

"Now," I thought to myself, "I know:' 

Thenceforward I looked at gardens not with the 
unenlightened enthusiasm of the casual amateur, 
but with a critic's eye. Here and there I would 
make a mental reservation, saying to myself that 
the man who made this garden had missed some- 
thing in one respect or another; that the one great 
principle, the volcanic principle, had not been fully 
carried out. 

So time went on until presently I found myself 
in Kyoto, the cultivated city of Japan, seated at a 
table (upon which were glasses and a bottle) beside 
one of the most interesting Japanese I had met, a 
man of ripe age and experience and of a philosophical 
turn of mind. He loved the history, the legends 
and the psychology of his native land, and enjoyed 

172 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 173 

sifting them through the interpretative screen of 
his own inteUigence. 

I hstened to him with eager interest. 

"To boast," said he, "is, according to our point 
of view, one of the cardinal sins. We so detest 
boasting that we go to the other extreme, depreciat- 
ing anything or anybody connected with ourselves. 
Thus, when some one says to me, 'Your brother has 
amassed a fortune; he must be a man of great ability,' 
I will reply: *He is not so very able. Perhaps he is 
only lucky.' As a matter of fact, it happens that 
my brother is a man of exceptional ability. But I 
must not say so ; it is not good form for me to praise 
his qualities. 

"In speaking of our wives and children we do 
the same. We say, 'my poor wife,' or, 'my insigni- 
ficant wife,' although she may fulfil our ideal of 
everything a woman should be. 

"Also the reverse of this proposition is true. We 
sometimes signify our disapproval or dislike of some 
one by speaking of him in terms of too high praise. 

"Among ourselves we fully understand these 
things. It is merely a code we follow. But I 
fear that this practice sometimes causes foreigners 
to misunderstand us. Being themselves accus- 
tomed to speak literally, they are inclined to take 
us so. Also, they are not likely to realize that we 
are most critical of those for whom we have profound 
regard. Why should we waste our time or our 
critical consideration upon persons who mean nothing 
to us or whom we dislike P 



174 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

"Yet, after all," he continued, with a little twinkle 
in his eye, "human natiu'e is much the same the 
world over. There was an American here in Kyoto 
once who used to forbid his wife and sister to smoke 
cigarettes, but I observed that he was quick to pass 
his cigarette-case to other ladies." 

He drifted on to a further discussion of differences 
between the point of view of Japan and that of the 
Occident. 

"For twenty-five centuries," said he, "our em- 
perors never lived behind a fortification. There 
was no need of it. The present imperial palace at 
Tokyo is, to be sure, protected by a moat and great 
stone walls, but that was originally built for shoguns, 
and was taken over by the Imperial House only at 
the time of the Restoration. 

"Our old Japanese idea is that the Emperor is 
the father of his people. There is a certain rever- 
ence, yet a certain democracy, too, in our feeling 
on this subject. We who have the old ideas regret 
that the Emperor now appears in a military or naval 
uniform. It is too much like the European way, 
too much like abandoning the feeling that he is the 
head of the family. For a uniform seems to make 
him only a part of the army or the navy. 

"But we had to modify our customs to suit those 
of other nations. Ambassadors began to come from 
foreign lands. The Emperor did not wish to see 
them, but was obliged to do so because they re- 
presented great powers to whom we could not say 
no. 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 175 

"At first, when the Emperor received ambas- 
sadors, he wore his ancient imperial robes and was 
seated upon cushions, Japanese fashion. But the 
ambassadors were arrayed in briUiant uniforms 
covered with decorations, and in accordance with 
their home customs they stood in the imperial 
presence. They would stand before a European 
king or an American president. Therefore it 
seemed to them respectful to stand before our Em- 
peror. 

*'But, according to our customs, that is the worst 
thing that can happen. We must always be lower 
than the Emperor; we must not even look from 
a second-story window when he drives by. The 
Emperor's audience-room was so constructed that 
he sat in an elevated place at the head of a flight 
of steps. But even so, one never entered his pres- 
ence standing fully erect. The idea of deference 
was visibly indicated by a stooping position, and 
as one ascended the steps toward the Imperial 
Person, one bent over more and more, until, on 
reaching the plane on which the Emperor was seated, 
one knelt, with bowed head, so as still to be below 
him. 

"A foreigner, on the other hand, wishing to show 
proper respect to an exalted personage, would make 
a bow from the waist and then assume a stiffly 
erect attitude, almost like a soldier standing at 
attention. Can you imagine an Occidental admiral 
or general, with his tight uniform, heavy braid, and 
sword, approaching any one upon his hands and 



176 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

knees? It would be foreign to his nature and train- 
ing, not to say ruinous to his costume.* 

''Moreover, the important foreigners who came 
to Japan at the beginning of the period of transition 
were gorgeous with gold lace and jewelled decora- 
tions. Up to that time we had no decorations 
and no modern uniforms and trappings of rank. 
Even our Emperor, in his magnificent robes, was 
not adorned with gold braid, and no jewels flashed 
from his breast. 

"Naturally, then, we had to change. We created 
new orders of nobility; decorations were devised, uni- 
forms were designed, all according to the European 
plan. In the old days we had shogxm, daimio, and 
samurai. Now we have princes of the blood, princes 
not of the blood, marquises, counts, viscounts, and 
barons. We have decorations to shine with foreign 
decorations. We have field-marshals and admirals 
to meet the foreign field-marshals and admirals.'* 

He sighed, and looked through the open window 
to the garden shimmering in moonlight. 

"Sometimes," he said, reflectively, "it seems to 
me that the only place where the spirit of Old 
Japan can feel at home is when it wanders through 
oiu- ancient gardens. They are unchanged." 

He paused, stiU gazing through the open window, 
then went on: 



*An extremely interesting account of the first audience given by 
the Emperor to a foreign ambassador is contained in "Memories," by 
the late Lord Redesdale, who was present. Lord Redesdale was then 
Mr, Mitford, and was engaged in preparing a volume which later 
became widely knovm under the title "Tales of Old Japan." 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 177 

"That is another thing I must talk to you about. 
We Japanese have a profound feeHng about gardens. 
The structure of a garden is a matter of the first 
importance. You must see some of our gardens." 

"I have done so already," I replied. "I have 
taken pains to visit many of them, and I " 



"But," he interrupted, "I am not speaking 
entirely of vision in the sense of sight. One must 
have understanding of these things. I am talking of 
the basic principles upon which every garden should 
be made." 

"That is just what I am talking about," I returned, 
enthusiastically. "It happens that I have made 
quite a study of your theory of gardens." 

I must own that I did not speak without a certain 
complacency. I had the comfortable feeling that al- 
ways comes to one who hears a subject broached 
and feels himself well equipped to discuss it. 

"That is very gratifying," said the philosopher, 
politely. 

It was indeed very gratifying. My memory 
was good. I casually mentioned the four periods 
of Japanese landscape gardening, making easy 
references to the Emperor Shomu, the scenery 
near the mouth of the Yangtse River, and the Chin- 
ese master Shunsui. Then I began to file my bill 
of particulars. 

"Of course," I said, "the one great secret of the 
art is to apply the volcanic principle. One should 
go for themes to places of volcanic origin — places 
like Lake Chuzenji and Nikko, places where lakes, 



178 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

formed in the beds of extinct volcanoes, overflow, 
making beautiful waterfalls and torrents which rush 
through rocky valleys. There, of course, is the basis 
for your entire garden composition." 

He sat staring at me. His eyes shone. Evi- 
dently I was making a deep impression on him. 

"Of course," I resumed, "volcanic explosions 
throw rich soil into " 

"Stop!" he cried, half rising from his chair. 
"Who gave you those theories? Where did you 
learn all this.^" 

"In Tokyo," I answered proudly, "I happened 
to meet " 

"Never mind whom you met," he broke in, his 
voice trembling with intensity. "These things 
you have been saying are terrible — terrible! Such 
ideas are ruining art and beauty in Japan. A garden 
of that kind is an abomination." 

I sat stunned while he stood over me. 

"The thing above all others to keep away from," 
he continued, vehemently, "is anything volcanic. 
That should be apparent to any one — any one! 
The very cause of volcanic structure is violence. 
It is the embodiment of turmoil, unrest." He 
made a wild gesture with his arms. "A volcano 
blows up, it explodes — bang! It throws everything 
about helter-skelter. It is horrible. That is a gar- 
den for a madhouse or the palace of a narikin — a 
new millionaire." 

"But don't you think " 

" If one thing is more essential than another in a 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 179 

garden," he went on, ignoring my effort to inter- 
rupt, "it is peace, tranquillity, an atmosphere con- 
ducive to meditation. Fancy a cultivated gentleman, 
a philosopher, trying to meditate among volcanoes, 
waterfalls, and roaring torrents! A garden should 
have no waterfalls. Water, if it is there at ail, 
should flow as placidly as philosophic thought. 
There should be no fish darting about, no noisy 
splashing fountains, no gaudy peonies, or other 
striking and distracting things. The purpose of a 
garden should not be display. Its proper purpose 
is not to excite the beholder, but to fill him with 
a rich contentment. A garden should be a bathing- 
place for the soul. And one no more wishes to 
plunge the soul than the body into a roaring torrent. 
No; there is in Hfe already too much stress and tur- 
moil. The soul cries out for repose. One must lave 
it in a crystal pool, heahng and refreshing." 

He paused, short of breath. 

"But don't you think — — " 

"Say no more! It is late. I must go home." 

I walked with him to the garden gate. A new 
moon hanging in a sky of blue and silver was re- 
flected in a still pool, its margins soft with the dark, 
cloud-like forms of shrubbery. Near the gate some 
calla lilies stood like graceful, silent ghosts. The 
night air was fragrant with the scent of rich, damp 
soil and growing things. 

"But don't you think," I pleaded as I opened the 
gate to let him pass, "that there is, after all, some- 
thing poetic in the volcanic conception of a garden.^" 



180 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

"No, no," he cried. " Poetic? No. Good night. 
Good night. I do not understand this new Japan. 
There is no repose any more. It is all volcanoes, 
all exploding. It is the beauties of calm that we 
are losing. Calm! Yes, that is it, cahn! cahn! 
cahn!" 

His agitated voice, shouting, "Calm! calm! calm!" 
came back to me as like a typhoon he whirled off into 
the darkness, leaving me in the sweet quiet of the 
garden — to meditate. 



PART III 



CHAPTER XVI 

The ''Connecticut Yankee'* in Old Japan — Commodore 
Perry — The Elder Statesmen — Marquis Okuma — Self- 
made Men — Viscount Shibusawa — The Power of the Daim- 
yo — Samurai Privileges, Including That of Suicide — 
Education in Old Japan—Jigoro Kano and Jiudo — The 
Farewell Letter of a Patriot — Kodokwan and Butokukai — 
The Old Military Virtues — General Nogi — His Death With 
Countess Nogi 

DESPITE the convulsions, overturnings, and 
transitions through which so many nations 
have lately been passing, Japan still holds 
the world's record for swift and stupendous change. 
The thing that happened to Japan staggers the im- 
agination. History affords no parallel. The near- 
est parallel is to be found in the fiction of a great 
imaginative writer. An American or a European 
going to Japan at approximately the time of the 
Imperial Restoration of 1868, found himself, in 
effect, dropped back through the centuries after the 
manner of Mark Twain's "Connecticut Yankee"; 
and the Japanese who hved through the transition 
which then began, met an experience like that pic- 
tured in Mark Twain's fantasy as having befallen 
the people of King Arthur's Court when modern 
knowledge was suddenly visited upon them. 

183 



184 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

The true story of Japan, however, surpasses in its 
wonder the invention of Mark Twain; for whereas 
the facts of history compelled the author of "A 
Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" 
to let ancient Britain backslide into her semi- 
barbarism after the disappearance of the Connecti- 
cut Yankee, Japan not only changed completely 
but held her gains and continued to progress. 

The beginning of the period of transition is cus- 
tomarily dated from the year 1853, when Commo- 
dore Perry first arrived, or from 1854, when he 
negotiated his treaty; but though that treaty did 
open the door through which the spirit of change was 
soon to enter, the actual modernizing of the nation 
did not start until 1868, when Yoshinobu TokugaAva, 
fifteenth of his fine, and last shogun to govern 
Japan, relinquished his power to the Emperor. 

Men able to remember the events of the Restora- 
tion are about as rare in Japan as are those who, in 
this country, remember the impeachment of Andrew 
Johnson, which occurred in the same year; and men 
who played important parts in the Restoration are 
of course rarer still — as rare, say, as Americans 
who played important parts in the Civil War. As 
for Japanese who can recaU Perry's visit, they would 
correspond in years to those who, with us, can 
recollect the beginning of the struggle for Free Soil 
in Kansas. In neither land, alas, is there more than 
a handful of such old folk left. 

It so happens, however, that in Japan several 
very remarkable men have survived to great age. 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 185 

The three most powerful figures in politics at the 
time of my visit were the octogenarian noblemen 
known as the Genro, or Elder Statesmen: Field 
Marshal Prince Yamagata, Marquis Matsukata, 
and Marquis Okuma. Prince Yamagata, as a 
soldier, took an active part in the civil warfare 
attending the Restoration. Both he and Marquis 
Okuma were born in 1838 — that is to say seven 
years before Texas was admitted to the Union as 
the twenty-eighth state- Marquise Matsukata was 
born in 1840. 

Of these venerable statesmen, Prince Yamagata 
and Marquis Matsukata figured, I found, as great 
unseen influences; but Marquis Okuma, while per- 
haps not actually more active than his colleagues 
of the Genro, appeared frequently before the pubhc, 
and was more of a popular idol, being often referred 
to as Japan's "Grand Old Man." In pohtics he 
had long been known as a great fighter and an artful 
tactician; also he was sympathetically regarded by 
reason of his having been, many years ago, the victim 
of a bomb outrage in which he lost a leg. 

I knew of his having been thus crippled, but 
through some trick of memory failed to recall the 
fact when, one day, I found myself a member of a 
small party of Americans received by the Marquis 
at his house. We were with him for something 
more than an hour; perhaps two hours. During 
that time he stood and made an address, moved 
about the room, and even stepped out to the garden, 
yet I was not once reminded of his physical handicap. 



186 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

I have never seen a person so seriously maimed 
who, in his movements, revealed it so Uttle. And 
that at eighty-three years of age! 

I should have guessed him twenty years younger. 
Lean, tall, wiry, alert, v/ith close-cropped white hair 
and snapping black eyes, he appeared to be at the 
very apex of his powers. 

That he was versatile I knew. All three of the 
Geiiro have at various times been Prime Minister, 
and have held other high offices under the Govern- 
ment, but Marquis Okuma's positions have been 
extremely varied, calling for the display of a wide 
range of knowledge and of talents. I was told that he 
had organized the Nationalist Party, pubhshed a 
magazine, edited a mmaber of important Kterary and 
historical works, founded and presided over Waseda 
University, and had long been famed as a horticul- 
turist. 

It was a curious thing to hear him speak in a 
language I could not understand, yet to feel so 
strongly his gift for swaying men with oratory. 

The experience reminded me of that of a newspaper 
man I know, who accompanied William Jennings Bryan 
on one of his political speech-making tours long ago. 

*'I was a dyed-in-the-wool RepubHcan," he told 
me, in recounting the experience, "and did not 
believe in Bryan or his measures, yet I continually 
found myseK carried away by his oratory. While 
he was speaking he made me believe in things I 
didnt believe in. I would want to applaud and 
cheer him like the rest of the audience. 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 187 

"Afterwards I would go back to the train and 
sober up. I wanted to kick myself for letting him 
twist me around his finger Hke that. But the next 
time I heard him the same thing would happen. It 
wasn't what he said; it was his voice and phrasing 
and his magnetism." 

I have no doubt that a Japanese unacquainted 
with English would sense Bryan's elocutionary 
power precisely as I did that of Marquis Okuma; 
indeed I am not sure that a foreigner, unfamiliar 
with the language of the orator, is not in a sense 
the auditor who can best measure his power. 

Marquis Okuma's features indicated extraordinary 
pugnacity, yet I should say that his pugnacity was 
under perfect control. He could exhibit both passion 
and icy coolness, and I believe he could turn on either 
at will, as one turns on hot or cold water. If he was 
William Jennings Bryan he was also Henry Cabot 
Lodge. 

It is worth remarking that these Elder Statesmen 
are without exception self-made men. None of 
them was born with a title; all were members of 
modest samurai famihes; all rose through ability. 

In this respect, as in many others, comparisons 
between the governmental system of Imperial 
Japan and that of Imperial Germany that was, 
do not hold. Japan is not governed by a hereditary 
ruling class. The government service is open to 
all men, under a system of competitive examinations, 
and promotion does not go by family or favour, 



188 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

but is in almost all cases a recognition of ability 
exhibited in minor offices. Young men in the con- 
sular service are in Hne for ambassadorships and 
may reasonably hope, if they exhibit great talents, 
ultimately to reach the highest offices. 

It would seem, moreover, that in Japan as in 
some other lands, aristocratic and wealthy families 
do not, as a rule, produce the strongest men. Thus 
I was informed that, of the entire cabinet of Prime 
Minister Hara, but one member was a man of noble 
family, that one having been Count Oki, Minister 
of Justice. And even Count Oki was only of the 
second generation of nobihty. 

In the business world the same rule applies. The 
titled business men of Japan have risen, practically 
without exception, from humble beginnings. I 
was told that one of them, whom I met, had begun 
life as a pedlar, and was proud of it. Looking 
up another business genius in the national "Who's 
Who," I jfind the following statement, which may be 
assumed to have been furnished by the gentleman to 
whom it refers: 

Arrived in Tokyo in '71, with empty purse; proceeded to 
Yokohama, supporting himself by hawking cheap viands. 

If the honorary title, "Grand Old Man of Japan," 
had not already been conferred, and I had been 
invited to make nominations, I should have gone 
outside the reahn of pohtics and cast my vote for 
Viscount Eiichi Shibusawa. 

Had the Viscount been, at the time of the Restora- 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 189 

tion, a member of one of the great clans responsible 
for the retm-n of the reins of government to Imperial 
hands, his career might have resembled more closely 
the careers of the three old nobles of the Genro. 
But whereas Prince Yamagata, Marquis Matsukata, 
and Marquis Okuma were respectively men of 
Choshu, Satsuma, and Saga — clans that cast their 
lot with the coalition that returned the Emperor 
to power — Viscount Shibusawa was on the other 
side, having been a retainer of the last shogun. 

The spoils went, naturally enough, to the victors. 
Strong men belonging to the clans which had sup- 
ported the Imperial House became the strong men 
of the centrahzed government. Even to-day, when 
clans, as such, no longer exist, the old clan senti- 
ment survives, with the result that men of Satsuma 
and Choshu origin are most influential in politics. 
The mihtaristic tendency sometimes noticed in the 
action of the Japanese Government is said to be 
largely due to this fact, for the clan of Satsuma 
was in the old days notorious for its warhke incHna- 
tions, and there is evidence to show that those 
inclinations have, to some extent survived. Naval 
officers are to-day drawn largely from old Satsuma 
famihes, while Choshu furnishes many officers to the 
army. 

At twenty-seven years of age. Viscount Shibusawa 
had by his abiHty become vice-minister of the 
Shogun's treasury. Naturally, then, after the faU 
of the shogimate, he went in for finance. He 
founded the First Bank of Japan — literally the 



190 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

first modern bank started there — and, prospering 
greatly became a man of large affairs. Repeatedly 
he was offered the portfolio of Finance under the 
Government, but always refused it. A few years 
ago he retired from active business, and as has al- 
ready been mentioned, gave his time thereafter to all 
manner of good works. 

When I met him he was nearing his eighty-second 
birthday. He distinctly remembered Perry's ar- 
rival in Japan and the events that followed. I 
wished to get the story of a representative man 
who had seen these things, and therefore asked him 
to grant me an interview. This he was so kind as 
to do, allowing me the better part of two days — ^for 
interviewing through an interpreter, even though 
he be the best of interpreters, is slow work. 

We talked in a pretty brick bungalow in the Vis- 
count's garden. Outside the door was an English 
rose-garden, with bushes trained to the shape of 
trees. 

Prior to that time I had always seen the Viscount 
wearing a frock coat or a dress suit, but here at 
home, on a day free from formalities, he was clad 
in the silken robes that Japanese gentlemen put on 
for comfort — though they might well put them on 
for elegance, too. 

Short, stocky, energetic, with a strong neck and 
large round head, the face seamed with deep wrinkles, 
he was one of the most extraordinary-looking men 
I had ever met. He radiated force, courage, 
honesty. I knew a Sioux chief, long ago, who had a 




Viscount Shibusawa, one of the Grand Old Men of Japan, 
consented to pose for me, wearing his samurai swords 




Viscount Kentaro Kaneko (Harvard '78), Privy Councilor 
to the Emperor, President of the America-Japan Society of 
Tokyo, and friend of President Roosevelt 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 191 

face like that, even to the colour, and to the deep 
wrinkles of humour about the mouth and eyes. 
Nor, in either case, did the promise of those wrinkles 
fail. 

When, having likened Viscount Shibusawa to an 
Indian chief, I also liken him to a barrel-bodied, 
square-jawed, weather-beaten old British squire 
of the perfect John Bull type, I may overtax the 
reader's imagination; yet there was in him as much 
of the one as of the other. 

He was born in the country, coming of a good but 
not aristocratic family. The Japan of his youth 
and early manhood was divided into some two 
hundred and fifty or three hundred feudal districts, 
each ruled by a daimyo, or chieftain, having his 
castles, his court, his concubines, his retainers — 
among the latter soldiers in armour, equipped with 
swords, spears or bows and arrows, and wearing hid- 
eous masks calculated to terrify the foe. 

These chiefs had absolute power over the people 
and lands in their domains. They could make 
laws, issue paper money, levy taxes, impose labour 
and punishment on the people, or arbitrarily take 
from them property or life itself. 

It was a land without raihoads, without steam 
power, without window-glass ; a land in which nobles 
journeyed by the highroads in magnificent proces- 
sions, surrounded by their soldiers, mounted and 
afoot, their lacquered palanquins, their coolie bear- 
ers; a land in which, when great lords passed, humble 
citizens fell to their knees and touched their fore- 



192 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

heads to the ground; a land of duels, feuds, vendettas, 
clan wars; a land in which the samurai, or gentry, 
alone were allowed to wear swords, and in which one 
of the privileges most highly prized by the samurai 
was that of dying by his own hand, if condemned 
to death, instead of by the hand of the executioner. 
Involved with the privilege of hara-kiri, or seppuku, 
was a property right. The property of a man 
beheaded by the executioner was confiscated, whereas 
one committing hara-kiri could leave his estate to 
his family. 

The education of young men varied in those times 
according to rank. Youths of the aristocracy 
were instructed in the Chinese classics, which in 
Japan take the place of Latin and Greek with us. 
Medicine and astronomy were also taught. The 
sons of lesser samurai received a training calculated 
to fit them for practical affairs. All those entitled to 
wear swords studied swordsmanship, and the pro- 
cess by which they learned it was sometimes severe, 
for it was the custom of masters to attack the pupil 
suddenly from behind, or even when he was asleep 
at night, on the theory that he should be ready 
at all times to defend himself. A samurai found 
killed with his sword completely sheathed was dis- 
graced. At least two inches of the blade must 
show in proof that the dead man had attempted 
a defence. Jiu-jutsu was also taught to many samurai 
youths, and in this, as in swordsmanship, it was the 
practice of instructors to make surprise attacks upon 
their pupils. 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 193 

Viscount Shibusawa's recollections of old days, as 
he recounted them to me, will make a separate 
chapter, but before that chapter is begun, let me 
mention several points of samurai tradition — among 
them jiu-jutsu, and the more advanced art or science 
of jiudo, developed by my friend Mr. Jigoro Kano. 

As after the Restoration the craze for all things 
American and European spread through Japan, 
the old arts of jiu-jutsu, which for more than three 
centuries had been practised by samurai, fell into 
disuse. Before that time there had been many dif- 
ferent schools of jiu-jutsu, teaching a variety of 
systems, but as the old masters of the art became 
superannuated no followers were arising to take their 
places. 

In 1878, when Mr. Kano took up the study of 
jiu-jutsu, he saw that, through lack of interest, 
many of the fine points of the art were likely to be 
lost. In order to preserve as much of it as he could, 
he went to great pains to make himself proficient, 
not merely in one system of jiu-jutsu, but in several 
systems as taught by the several great masters 
then alive. 

His first interest in jiu-jutsu arose through the 
fact that he had been a weak child and wished to 
make himself a strong man. I was reminded of 
Theodore Roosevelt's sickly childhood when Mr. 
Kano told me that; and it is interesting to recall 
that it was President Roosevelt who first caused 
jiu-jutsu to be widely talked of in the United States, 
and that he studied it, while in the White House, 



194 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

under one of Mr. Kano's pupils. Also I was in- 
terested to hear from Mr. Kano that, as a young 
man, he gave an exhibition of jiu-jutsu before 
General Grant, at Viscount Shibusawa's house in 
Tokyo. 

Far from being a professional athlete, Mr. Kano 
is a gentleman of samurai family, a graduate of the 
Literary College of the Imperial University, a 
linguist, a traveller, an educator of high reputation, 
the holder of several decorations. Among other 
oflQces he has been head master of the Peers' School 
in Tokyo. 

As the reader is doubtless aware, the theory of 
jiu-jutsu was to defeat the adversary, not by pitting 
force against force, but by yielding before the op- 
ponent's onslaughts in such a way as to turn his 
strength against him. 

Jiudo, which means "the way or doctrine of 
yielding," is a combination, created by Mr. Kano, 
of all systems of jiu-jutsu interwoven with a plan 
of mental, moral, and physical training, calculated 
to elevate the art above any mere consideration 
of combat alone — although that side is by no means 
neglected. 

Innumerable stories, exciting or amusing, might 
be told of the heroic adventures of celebrated jiu- 
doists, but I know of nothing which sheds more light 
upon Mr. Kano's teachings, in their moral aspect, 
than does a letter written to him by Commander 
Yuasa of the Japanese Navy, a former pupil of 
the Kodokwan, the school of jiudo established by 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 195 

Mr. Kano in Tokyo. The letter was written by 
Commander Yuasa when he was about to take the 
steamer Sagami Maru and sink her at the harbom* 
entrance in the third blockading expedition at 
Port Arthur. The following are extracts from 
it: 

We shall do all that human power can, and leave the rest to 
Heaven. Thus we can calmly ride to certain death. I am 
happy to say that among the members of this forlorn hope are 
three of your former pupils: Commander Hirose, Lieutenant 
Commander Honda, and myself. May this fact redound to the 
credit of the Kodokwan. 

Though I greatly regret that while Kving I could not do justice 
to the kindness you have shown me, still please accept as an 
expression of my gratitude the fact that I lay down my life for 
the sake of our country, as you have so kindly taught us, in 
time of peace, to be ready to do. 

The writer of this letter was lost, as was also 
Commander Hirose, one of the brother officers 
he mentions. The other. Lieutenant Commander 
Honda, was wounded by a shell, but was rescued 
and lived to tell the tale. 

Foreigners visiting Japan and wishing to see jiudo 
demonstrated, are welcome at the Kodokwan, 
where, if notice is given, an interpreter is provided. 
There are now some twenty thousand practitioners 
of jiudo who look to the Kodokwan as headquarters 
and to Mr. Kano as their master. 

Another place where jiudo may be witnessed 
is at the Butokukai — ^Association for the Inculcation 
of the Military Virtues — in Kyoto. The latter is 
a private organization, like an athletic club, with a 



196 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

fine temple-like building, and many branch establish- 
ments throughout the country. It has some two 
hundred thousand members, of which several thou- 
sands are active. 

The primary idea of this organization is to keep 
alive certain old Japanese mihtary arts, such as 
jiudo, archery, fencing, the use of lances and spears, 
and the employment of the cm-ious lance-like 
naginata, which, with its curved blade and long 
handle, was used only by women. 

Contests between men armed with dimimy swords 
and women using wooden naginata are sometimes 
to be witnessed at the Butokukai, and are extremely 
interesting as recalling the days when the women 
of Old Japan fought beside their men, using the 
naginata as an offensive weapon, and a short dagger, 
worn in the fold of the obi, as a defensive weapon 
corresponding to the shorter of the two swords 
that men used to wear. 

Samurai women were taught to defend themselves 
with the dagger, and to use it for suicide if in fear 
of defeat and dishonour. FamiHes in which the 
samurai tradition is sedulously maintained still 
make it a custom to present their daughters, at the 
time of marriage, with daggers of this type, though 
such weapons are now recognized merely as emblems 
of a spirit to be preserved. 

The great modem samurai hero of Japan was Gen- 
eral Count Nogi, the hero of Port Arthur, in memory 
of whom a shrine was recently dedicated in Tokyo. 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 197 

This shrine stands in the grounds behind the simple 
house in Tokyo where Count and Countess Nogi hved, 
and where they died together by their own hands. 
Nogi is canonized in Japan, and his house is held 
a sacred place, and is visited by thousands of persons 
each year. 

The theory upon which self-destruction is practised 
according to the old samurai tradition, and is widely 
approved in certain circumstances, is one of the 
things that baffles the Occidental mind. 

I therefore asked Viscount Kentaro Kaneko, who 
knew General Nogi, to tell me the story of his death, 
and to explain to me how he came to conomit seppuku. 

"When Nogi was given command at Port Arthur," 
said the Viscount, "his two sons were officers under 
him. He told his v/ife to prepare three coffins, 
and to hold no funeral services until all three were 
ready to be buried together. 

"In the assault on Port Arthur some thirty 
thousand Japanese soldiers gave up their lives. 
This sacrifice of life was at first much criticized 
in Japan, but public sentiment changed in face of 
the fact that the General lost both his sons. He 
returned to Japan a victor, it is true, but a most 
unhappy man. Always in his mind were thoughts 
of the famines of the thirty thousand brave young 
men it had been necessary to sacrffice. He did not 
want to be acclaimed in the streets, but to be let 
alone. He went about in an old uniform and tried 
to be as inconspicuous as possible. 

"One day at an audience with the Emperor 



198 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

Meiji, Nogi said to him as he was leaving, something 
to the effect that he should never see him again. 

"The Emperor, gathering that Nogi was contem- 
plating seppuku, called him back. 

"*Nogi,' he said, T still have need of you. I 
want your life.' 

"So the General did not carry out his plan at that 
time, but Hved on, as the Emperor had ordered him 
to do, becoming president of the school at which 
the sons of nobles are educated. 

"All through the years, however, he was haunted 
by the memory of the thirty thousand soldiers he 
had been compelled to send to their death. 

"When the Emperor Meiji died, Nogi was one 
of the guard of honour, made up of peers, who in 
rotation watched at the Imperial bier for forty 
days and forty nights. 

"Then came the state funeral. On the day of 
the funeral Nogi wrote a poem which declared in 
effect, *I shall follow in the footsteps of Your 
Majesty.' This poem he showed to Prince Yama- 
gata, who took it to mean merely that Nogi would 
be in the procession following the Imperial remains 
to the grave. 

"But when the guns announced the daparture 
of the funeral cortege from the palace, Nogi was 
not there. Like the samurai of old, he desired 
to follow his dead master into the beyond. At 
the sound of the guns he took his short sword and 
committed seppuku, while in the next room Countess 
Nogi, his devoted wife, dressed all in white, cut 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 199 

the arteries of her neck. Thus the two died together, 
for the sake of the Emperor and the thirty thousand 
soldiers who had sacrificed their Hves." 

At no point is the outlook of the Oriental more 
completely at odds with that of the Occidental, 
than in the view it takes of suicide. 

Whereas with us suicide is condemned as cowardly, 
being resorted to as a means of escape from the hard- 
ships of life, there will oftentimes be something 
highly heroic in a Japanese suicide. Unhappiness, 
it is true, does drive some Japanese to self-destruction, 
but in many other cases the suicide represents some- 
thing more in the nature of a self-inflicted punish- 
ment for failure of some kind. Thus it is with the 
schoolboys who sometimes kill themselves because 
they have failed in their examinations. Likewise, 
while in Japan I heard of two railroad gatemen who 
had, by failing to close their gate when a train was 
coming, been responsible for the death of a man 
travelling in a ricksha. A few days after this acci- 
dent both these gatemen suicided by throwing them- 
selves beneath a train. For their neglect they paid 
voluntarily with their lives. 

"And," said the Viscount, "we had in the old 
days another sort of suicide, examples of which some- 
times occur even to this day. When a man be- 
lieved profoundly in something, and was unable 
to attract attention to the thing in which he beheved, 
he would sometimes commit seppuku as a means 
of drawing notice to it. He would leave a paper 



200 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

setting forth his behefs, and people would give it 
attention, feeling that if a man was willing to die in 
order to emphasize a point, his message was worth 
considering." 

The Viscount paused. Then rather reflectively he 
added: "It is as though he were to underscore his 
protest — in red." 



CHAPTER XVII 

The Old-time Anti-Foreign Sentiment — Prince Yoshinobu 
Tokugawa — Emperor and Shogun — Prince Yoshinobu be- 
comes Shogun — His Highness, Akitake, Goes to France — 
— Humorous Episodes — The Defeat of Prince Yoshinobu s 
Army — Various Explanations — The Restoration of the 
Emperor — Prince Yoshinobu s Retirement — The Viscount's 
Theory — Prince Keikyu Tokugawa — A Roosevelt Anecdote 
— Swords and Watchchain 

WAS a boy of fourteen," said Viscount Shibusawa 
"when your Commodore Perry came to Japan. 
At that time, and for a considerable period 
afterwards, I was * anti-foreigner' — that is, I was 
opposed to the abandonment of our old Japanese 
isolation, and to the opening of relations with foreign 
powers. _ 

"The majority of thoughtful men felt as I did. 
Our trouble with the Jesuits, in the latter part of the 
sixteenth and early part of the seventeenth century 
came about through a fear which grew up amongst 
us that the Jesuits were trying to get political control 
of Japan. This fear brought about their expulsion 
from the country, as well as some persecution of 
themselves and their converts, and it was then that 
our policy of isolation began. More lately we had 
seen the Opium War in China, and that had added 

201 



202 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

to our conviction that foreign powers were merely 
seeking territory, and that they were utterly un- 
scrupulous. 

"When I reached the age of twenty-five, I became 
a retainer of Yoshinobu Tokugawa, a powerful 
prince, kinsman of lyemochi Tokugawa, who was 
then Shogun. Not being of noble family, I did 
not belong to Prince Yoshinobu's intimate circle, 
but was a member of what might be termed the 
middle group at his court. 

"He was then acting as intermediary between 
the Shogun and the Imperial Court at Kyoto — for 
though the Shogun ruled the land, as shoguns had 
for centuries, there was maintained a fiction that 
he did so by imperial consent. 

"When lyemochi died, the powerful daimyos 
nominated my lord, Prince Yoshinobu, to succeed 
him. I was opposed to his accepting the office, 
for the country was then in a very unsettled condi- 
tion, and I felt sure that the next shogun, whoever 
he might be, would have serious difficulties to en- 
counter; especially with the important question 
of foreign relations to the fore, and with such power- 
ful lords as those of ' Satsuma ., Choshu, Tosa, and 
Hizan becoming increasingly hostile to the shogunate 
and increasingly favourable to the Imperial House. 

"The fact that Prince Yoshinobu had acted as 
intermediary between his kinsman, the fourteenth 
Shogun, and the Imperial Court at Kyoto, made it a 
dehcate matter for him later to accept the shogunate. 
Moreover, though he belonged to the Tokugawa 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 203 

family, his branch of the family, the Mito branch, 
had continually insisted upon Imperial supremacy 
in Japan. Ho^vever, circumstances compelled him 
to accept the office. I was greatly disappointed 
when he did so. 

"This occurred two years after I became his 
retainer. I was now vice-minister of his treasury, 
with the additional duties of keeping track of all 
modern innovations and supervising the new-style 
military drill, with rifles, which we were then taking 
up. 

"Shortly after becoming Shogun, Yoshinobu de- 
cided to send his brother, Akitake, to France to 
be educated, and he appointed me a member of the 
entourage that was to accompany the young man. 
I was then twenty-seven years old. 

"We sailed in January 1867 — a party of twenty- 
five, among whom were a doctor, an officer who went 
to study artillery, and various others besides Akit- 
ake's seven personal attendants. 

"For international purposes the Shogun was now 
called Tycoon, for the word 'shogun,' meaning 
*generaUssimo,' carried with it no connotation of 
rulership; whereas * tycoon' means 'great prince' 
— and of com'se it seemed proper enough for a great 
prince to treat with foreign powers. As brother of 
the Tycoon, Akitake received, in Europe, the 
title ' Highness ' 

"Matters looked very ominous for the shogunate 
at the time we left Japan, but I felt that the best 
thing for me to do was to go abroad and learn all 



204 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

I could, with a view to being better able to serve 
my country when I should return. 

"The members of our party wore the Japanese 
costume, including topknots and two swords. I, 
however, devised a special elegance for myself. 
I heard that the governor of Saigon, where our ship 
was to stop, intended to welcome our party officially, 
so I had a dress coat made." The Viscount shook 
with laughter as he recalled the episode. "It 
wasn't a dress suit — just the coat. And when we got 
to Saigon I wore that coat over my Japanese silks, 
in the daytime. 

"Our lack of experience with European ways 
caused many amusing things to happen. For in- 
stance, when we were in the train crossing the 
Isthmus of Suez — there was no canal then — one 
member of the party, unaccustomed to window-glass, 
threw an orange-peel, expecting it to go out of the 
window. The peel hit the glass and bounced back 
falling into the lap of an official who had come 
to escort us across the isthmus. We were much 
embarrassed. 

"Later, in Paris, another absurd thing occurred. 
You must understand that in Japan it is customary 
for guests, leaving a house where they have been 
entertained, to wrap up cakes and such things and 
take them home. One member of our party, who 
had never seen ice-cream before, attempted this, 
wrapping the ice-cream in paper and tucking it in 
the front of his kimono. Needless to say, the ice- 
cream was no longer ice-cream when he got back 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 205 

to the hotel, and he himself was not very comfort- 
able. 

"The Paris Exposition of 1867 was in progress 
when we arrived. When it was over we travelled 
through Switzerland, Holland, Belgium, Italy, and 
England. Originally it was planned that after 
our official tour we should settle down to study, 
and I was eager for this time to come. However, 
it was not long before we received news that the 
shogunate had fallen. 

"The news was puzzhng. I could not gather 
what was happening in Japan. First I heard that 
Yoshinobu, as shogun, had publicly returned full 
authority of the Emperor, but later came word of 
the battle of Toba-Fushimi, in which troops of the 
Imperial Party defeated troops of the Shogun. 
This made it appear that Yoshinobu had played 
false, first publicly relinquishing the shogun's power 
and then fighting to maintain it. These seemingly 
conflicting acts puzzled me, for I knew that Yoshin- 
obu was a man of the highest honour. 

"Presently came a messenger from Japan saying 
that Akitake had become head of the Mito branch 
of the Tokugawa family, which made it necessary 
for us to abandon our plans and return. We sailed 
from England in December 1867, reaching Japan 
in November 1868, eleven months later. 

"I was dumbfounded by the changes I found. 
Though I knew that the Shogun Government had 
fallen I had not visualized what that would mean. 
My lord, Yoshinobu, was held prisoner in a house in 



206 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

Suruga. Learning that he was allowed to see his 
intimate friends and retainers, I jom-neyed to Siu^uga, 
where I had audience with him several times. I 
found him reticent, and was able to get from him 
Uttle information as to the mysterious course he had 
pursued. 

"After having been held prisoner for a year he was 
released, but he continued for thirty years to reside 
in the neighbourhood of Suruga, leading a secluded 
life. Not until thirty-one years after his resignation 
of the shogunate did he come to Tokyo. Four 
years later the Emperor created him a prince of the 
new regime. This showed pretty clearly that the 
Emperor had not mistrusted him. 

"For twenty years after my retm'n to Japan 
I was unable to get at the bottom of this matter. 
I tried to get some explanation from Yoshinobu 
himself, but he evaded my inquiries. Meanwhile 
the question was constantly discussed in Japan. 
Those hostile to Yoshinobu contended that he had 
not acted with sincerity, having been led by the 
burdens connected with the opening of foreign 
relations, to lay down the shogunate, and having 
later changed his mind and fought to retain it. 
On the face of it, this seemed true. Yoshinobu 
was called a coward and a traitor, and was severely 
criticized for having escaped after the battle of 
Toba-Fushimi. 

"On the other hand, those who supported Yoshin- 
obu asserted that he had acted logically and wisely: 
that he had seen that his government was going to 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 207 

fall, and had been entirely honest in surrendering 
the shogunate prior to the battle. These adherents 
insisted that he had not wanted a battle, but had set 
out for Kyoto to see the Emperor with a view to 
arranging details, especially with regard to the future 
weKare of his retainers. "But when a great lord 
travelled, in those times, he travelled with an army, 
and Yoshinobu's defenders maintained that this was 
what had brought on the battle — that when the men 
of Choshu and Satsuma learned that Yoshinobu 
was moving toward Kyoto with his soldiers, they 
came out and attacked him, beheving, or pretending 
to beheve, that he was on a hostile errand. 

"At this time the Emperor was but seventeen 
years of age, and the Government was in the hands of 
elder statesmen of the Imperial Party. The Emperor 
himself probably had no idea on what errand Yoshi- 
nobu was approaching Kyoto ; and whether the elder 
statesmen knew or not, they belonged to clans hostile 
to the shogunate, and preferred to fight. 

"Many years passed before the truth began to 
become clear. At last, when the old wounds were 
pretty well healed, I undertook the compilation 
of a history of Yoshinobu's life and times. Finally 
I asked him point-blank about the events connected 
with his resignation and the subsequent battle. 
He told me that he had indeed started to Kyoto 
on a peaceful errand, but that when the forces sent 
out by the great clansmen appeared, he could not 
control his own men. He had neither sought nor 
desired battle. Feeling that his highest duty 



208 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

was to the Emperor^ he withdrew from the battle, 
taking no part in it, and returned whence he had 
come, going into retirement. He knew, of com"se, 
that the battle would put him in a false light, and he 
decided that the wisest and most honourable course 
for him to piu'sue was to show, by his life in retire- 
ment, his absolute submission to the Emperor. 

*'In order fully to appreciate why Yoshinobu 
was so ready to lay down his power, the old Japanese 
doctrine of loyalty to the throne must be fully 
grasped. This loyalty amounts to a religion, and 
permeates the whole life of Japan. That is why 
the shoguns who for so many centuries ruled Japan, 
never attempted to usurp imperial rank, but were 
satisfied, while usurping the power, to preserve the 
form of governing always as vice-regents. 

"It is my personal belief that when Yoshinobu 
Tokugawa accepted the shogunate despite the op- 
position of his trusted retainers, he did so with the 
full intention of restoring to the Imperial House its 
rightful power. I used to ask him about this, and 
while he never admitted it, he never denied it. 
That was characteristic of him. He was the most 
modest and self-effacing of men — the last man who 
would have claimed for himself the credit for per- 
forming a self-sacrificing and heroic act of patriotism. 
For him the performance of the act was sufficient." 

Throughout my talk with Viscount Shibusawa 
I felt in him the passionate loyalty of the retainer 
to his lord. Where I had wished for reminiscences 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 209 

of a more personal nature, the Viscount, I could 
see, thought of himself first of all in his relation to 
the family of Prince Yoshinobu, the last shogun, 
whose retainer he was. He w^as not interested in 
teUing me of his own career, but he was profoundly 
interested in seeing that I, being a writer, should 
understand the relationship of Prince Yoshinobu 
to the Imperial Restoration. His attitude reminded 
me of that of a noble old Southern gentleman, now 
dead and gone, who had been the adjutant of Robert 
E. Lee, and who loved Lee and loved to talk about 
him. When I talked with him it was the same. I 
had great difficulty in getting him to tell me about 
his own experiences. 

The loyalty of the retainer to the family of his 
lord is also to be seen in the relationship between 
the Viscount and young Prince Keikyu Tokugawa, 
son of Yoshinobu. After the death of the father the 
Viscount continued to act as advisor to the son. 
He became his chief counsellor, and when, a few 
years since, he resigned from the board of directors of 
the First Bank of Japan — the hsnk which he founded 
five years after the Restoration — it was young Prince 
Tokugawa who succeeded to his empty chair. 

The Prince, who is a member of the House of 
Peers, is known in the United States, having come 
here diu*ing the war as representative of the Japanese 
Red Cross. 

Viscount Shibusawa is also a figure not unfamiliar 
to Americans, having visited this country several 



210 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

times. I am indebted to him for an anecdote il- 
lustrative of the prodigious memory of President 
Roosevelt. 

"Eighteen years ago," he said, "when Mr. Roose- 
velt was president, I called upon him at the White 
House. We had a pleasant talk. He complimented 
the behaviour of the Japanese troops in the Boxer 
trouble, saying that they were not only brave but 
orderly and well disciplined. Then he spoke with 
admiration of the art of Japan. 

"I said to him, *Mr. President, I am only a 
banker, and I regret to say that in my country 
banking is not yet so highly developed as is art.' 

"'Perhaps it will be,' he rephed, *by the time we 
meet again.' 

"Thirteen years later, when I called upon him 
at his home at Oyster Bay, he took up the conversa- 
tion where we had left off. 

" 'The last time I saw you,' he said, * I did not ask 
you about banking in Japan. Now I want you to 
tell me all about it.'" 

As I was leaving the bungalow in the garden, 
late in the afternoon of the second day spent ii> 
interviewing the Viscount, the thought came to me 
that probably I should never again talk with a 
man who had lived through such transitions. I 
wanted a souvenir, and I wished it to be something 
emblematic of the changes witnessed by those 
shrewd, humorous old eyes. 

Therefore, not without some hesitation, I asked the 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 211 

Viscount if he would be so kind as to put on his two 
samurai swords and let me take his photograph. 

He dispatched a servant who presently returned 
from the house bearing the weapons. The Viscount 
tucked them through his sash, and I snapped the 
shutter, hoping fervently that the late afternoon 
Hght would prove to have been adequate. 

As the reader may see for himself, the picture 
turned out well. Indeed it turned out better than 
I myself had anticipated, for besides the swords 
and silken robes of Old Japan, there may be seen 
in it a very modern note. 

It was the Viscount's grandson who, when I showed 
him the photograph, called attention to that. 

"Yes," he said, with a smile, "you have there the 
swords of Old Japan. But the watch-chain — that is 
an anachronism." 




CHAPTER XVIII 

Viscount Kaneko's Home — Some Souvenirs — A Rooseveltian 
Memory — Doctor Bigelow's Prophecy — A First Meeting 
with Roosevelt — The Russo-Japanese War — Luncheons at the 
White House — Roosevelt's Interest in the Samurai Tradition 
— Sagamore Hill — Mrs. Roosevelt and Quentin — A Simple 
Home — The President Brings Blankets — A Bear Hunt — 
The Peace of Portsmouth and a Bearskin for the Emperor — A 
Letter of Roosevelt's on Relations with Japan — A Letter from 
Mid- Africa — " A mer ican Samura i ' ' 

'EVER while in Japan did I feel quite so 
close to home as on the several occasions 
^hen I sat in the study of Viscount Kentaro 
Kaneko, in Tokyo, listening to his reminiscences and 
looking at his souvenirs of Theodore Roosevelt. 

No Japanese has been more widely known in the 
United States, or more familiar with our ways, 
than Viscount Kaneko (Harvard '78), Privy Coun- 
cilor to the Emperor, chairman of the commission 
which is engaged in preparing the history of the 
reign of the late Emperor Meiji, and president of 
the America- Japan Society of Tokyo. 

I found him living in a good-sized but not osten- 
tatious house, purely Japanese in architecture. 
But it was not purely Japanese in its equipment. 
Like the houses of other Tokyo gentlemen accus- 

£12 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 213 

tomed to see much of foreigners, it had carpet over 
the hall matting, rendering the removal of shoes 
unnecessary, and certain of its rooms were furnished 
in the Occidental style. 

Such rooms, in Japan, usually are stiff reception- 
rooms which look as if they were used only when 
visitors from abroad put in an appearance; but 
Viscount Kaneko's study held a homelike feeling 
which made me think the room was frequented by the 
master of the house when no guests were present. 

On the walls were framed photographs of notables, 
European and American, with the Roosevelt family 
very much to the fore, and I noticed beneath the 
photograph of President Roosevelt a cordial inscrip- 
tion in the familiar handwriting, so honest and boy- 
ish — ^writing as unlike that of any other great man 
as Roosevelt himself was unlike any other great 
man. 

When I had crossed and read the inscription. 
Viscount Kaneko called my attention to the frame. 

"That frame," he said, "is made from a piece 
of Oregon pine which was brought among other 
presents to the Shogun by Commodore Perry. The 
Emperor presented me with a piece of the wood, 
and I had made from it that frame and a writing box 
on which the scene of Perry's arrival is depicted in 
gold lacquer." 

There was also a photograph of Mrs. Roosevelt 
with two of her sons, and one of Quentin Roosevelt 
as a child, astride a pony, with an inscription to 
the Viscount's son Takemaro, dated August seventh, 



214 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

1905. In the corner of the frame was inserted a 
photograph which the Viscount had caused to be 
taken of Quentin's grave in France. 

Viscount Kaneko was a student at Harvard when 
Roosevelt entered the imiversity, but they were 
two years apart and did not know each other there. 
Their first naeeting occurred in Washington in 1889, 
when Roosevelt was Civil Service Commissioner 
and Viscount Kaneko was returning to Japan after 
having visited the principal countries of Europe 
for the purpose of studying parhamentary forms. 
The first Japanese Parhament met in the year follow- 
ing, 1890, when Japan adopted a Constitution. 

In looking back upon my interviews with the 
Viscount I find myself marvelling to-day, as I did 
then, at the detailed accuracy of his memory. He 
recounted events of fifteen and more years before 
with a vividness and an attention to trifles that was 
extraordinary. It was as if he had refreshed his 
memory by reading from a diary. 

"I had two letters of introduction to Roosevelt," 
he told me, "when I went to Washington in 1889. 
One had been given to me by James Bryce, later 
Viscount Bryce, who was then in Gladstone's 
Cabinet. The other I received from my friend 
Dr. WiUiam Sturges Bigelow. 

" When Doctor Bigelow gave me the letter, he said: 
'This will introduce you to a man who will some day 
be President of the United States.' I always re- 
membered that and watched Roosevelt's career 
with the more interest for that reason. 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 215 

**0n reaching Washington I called on Roosevelt 
at a private boarding house where he was Hving, 
and he returned my call next day. Naturally 
I perceived at once that he was a man of extraor- 
dinarily vigorous mind. I enjoyed him greatly, 
and was pleased and interested, after my return 
to Japan, to see him steadily ascending. He became 
Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Colonel of the 
Rough Riders, Governor of New York. 'Now,' 
I said to myself on reading that he had been elected 
Governor, 'he is on the way to fulfilling Doctor 
Bigelow's prophecy.' Then he became Vice- 
President, and I thought: 'That is too bad. They 
have shelved him. He won't be President after 
all.' But McKinley was assassinated and Roosevelt 
came to the White House. 

"Early in 1904, at the time of om' war with Russia, 
I was sent to the United States on an unofficial 
embassy. I went first to New York, where I re- 
mained for a week; then to Washington. There 
I called on my old friend Mr. Justice Hohnes of the 
Supreme Court — 'Brother Kaneko' he used to call 
me — requesting him to take me to the White House 
to meet the President, who I thought would not 
remember me. But Justice Hohnes had disagreed 
with Roosevelt over the Northern Securities case, 
and did not feel that he was persona grata at the 
White House just then. Therefore I arranged 
through our Minister, Mr. Takahira, for a meeting. 

"One morning in May, 1904, the Minister took 
me to call upon the President. Our appointment 



216 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

was for half past ten. We were not kept waiting 
long. I will never forget the picture of Roosevelt 
as he quickly thrust open the door and rushed into 
the room. The Minister had no chance to present 
me. T am dehghted to see you again Baron!' 
the President exclaimed in that wonderfully hearty 
way of his. And as we shook hands he threw his 
arm over my shoulder, demanding: 'Why did you 
stay for a week in New York.^ Why didn't you 
come and see me right away?' 

"During our talk, which lasted an hour, he let me 
see that he was absolutely neutral in his official at- 
titude toward our war with Russia, but nevertheless 
made me feel that he had much personal sympathy 
for Japan. He declared frankly that popular senti- 
ment in the United States was favourable to Japan, 
and added that the Russian Government had com- 
plained that American army and navy officers were 
openly pro-Japanese. This had made it necessary 
for him to issue a proclamation of neutrahty. But 
though, as President, he was particular to be scrupu- 
lously just to both sides, I was in no doubt as to 
the friendliness of his private sentiments. 

"He advised me not to stay in Washington, 
but to make my headquarters in New York, coming 
over to Washington to see him when it was necessary. 
This I did, and as time went on, and we became closer 
friends, he often did me the honour of inviting me 
to luncheon en famille at the W^hite House. 

"At one of these luncheons I told him of Doctor 
Bigelow's prophecy, and of how I had watched him 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 217 

mounting step by step to its fulfilment. That 
seemed to please him. 

" 'Edith,' he called across the table to Mrs. Roose- 
velt, *do you hear that? Here is a man who has 
kept a friendly eye on me from away off in Japan.' 

"Once at one of these intimate White House 
luncheons he remarked that as President it was neces- 
sary to preserve a certain style. * Coming to see us 
here,' he said, *you don't get an accurate idea of 
what our family life really is. You must come and 
pay us a visit at Oyster Bay this summer when we 
get home. Then you will know more about us.' 

"He did not forget the invitation, but early in 
July 1905, repeated it by telegraph. I went to 
Oyster Bay and stayed over night. It was in many 
ways a memorable experience. 

"He was always greatly interested in our samurai 
tradition and in the doctrine we call bushido. I 
remember his asking me how much money was re- 
quired for the keeping up of a samm-ai's position. 
I explained that there were different classes of 
samurai — that the shoguns had themselves been sa- 
murai, with others of various grades below them. 

"'Middle-class samurai,' I said, 'do not need a 
great deal of money. They require only enough 
for dress to be worn on social occasions, for the 
education of their families, and the maintenance of 
their political position, whatever it may be. They 
need no money for pleasures or extravagances.' 

"'Just the same,' the President replied, 'a man 
doesn't want to fall behind his ancestors, materially 



218 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

or otherwise. Take my own case: I want to keep 
my place as my forbears kept theirs. I desire 
neither more nor less than what my father had. I 
want my children to be able to grow up in this old 
home at Oyster Bay just as the children of my 
generation did.' Then he began to ask me more 
about the details of samurai life. 

"'What about doctor's bills?' he asked. Tou 
didn't mention that item in estimating the expense 
of living.' 

"I told him of a curious custom we used to have. 
In each samm-ai class there were famiHes of doctors 
who were endowed by the Government, the profession 
being passed down from father to son. These 
doctors took care of samurai famiKes of the rank 
corresponding to their own, and charged nothing for 
so doing. Twice a year, in January and July, when 
it is customary to give presents, presents were given 
to the doctors. They also took care of the poor as 
a matter of charity. 

"That interested him, too. He was always in- 
tensely interested in the samurai, because our 
samurai virtues were virtues of a kind he particu- 
larly admired — courage, stoicism, love of duty and 
of country. 

"We sat on the wide verandah, overlooking the 
lawn sloping down toward Long Island Sound. 
Mrs. Roosevelt sat with us, knitting. It was July, 
but she was knitting mittens. Presently a maid 
came and spoke to her, and she left us. 

"When she came back she said to me, *Baron, 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 219 

I want to ask a favour of you. Quentin has been 
crying. He took great pains to clean his pony 
to-day, to show it to you, and we promised that he 
should be allowed to do so. He has been riding 
around the lawn hoping you would notice him,' 

"Of coiu'se I sent for Quentin, and he appeared 
proudly upon his pony. I asked him to ride around 
the lawn, which he did. 

"'You ride splendidly!'^ I said, when he drew 
up again before the porch. 

"'Do you think so.^' he asked, evidently much 
pleased. 

" 'Indeed I do!' I said, and asked him to go around 
the lawn again. 

"When he came back I told him about my son, 
who was just his age. *I shall have him learn to 
ride,' I said, 'and when he can ride as well as you 
can I shall have his picture taken on a pony and 
send it to you.' 

"That," continued the Viscount, "is how we 
happen to have this picture of Quentin on his pony. 
He sent it to my son, and my son sent him a picture. 
I always hke to think of the good-will there was 
between those two boys— an American boy and a 
Japanese boy who had never seen each other. 

"That night we sat talking in the drawing room 
which is to the left of the hall as you go into the 
house. Mrs. Roosevelt was still knitting mittens 
for the children. It was all wonderfully simple 
and homelike. I could hardly beheve that I was 
in the home of the head of a great nation. At 



220 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

that time the house was Hghted with kerosene lamps, 
yet in Japan I had been using electric hght for fifteen 
years. 

"At about ten o'clock Mrs. Roosevelt said good- 
night to us and retired. Before she went upstairs 
she moved about, fastening windows and putting 
out lamps in parts of the house in which they would 
not be needed any more. Then she brought candles 
and matches so that we should have them when we 
were ready to go to bed. 

"After an hour's talk about the war, which was 
still raging, the President rose and lit the candles. 
Then he put out the remaining lamps, and conducted 
me upstairs to my room. It was a cool night. He felt 
of the coverings on my bed, and decided that I might 
need another blanket. T'll get you one,' he said, 
leaving the room. And in a minute or two he reap- 
peared with a blanket over his shoulder. 

"'Come,' he said, as he put it on the bed, *and 
I'll show you the bathroom.' I went with him. 
'Here's soap,' said he, 'and here are clean towels.' 
Then he took me back to my room and wished me a 
good night. 

"As for me, I was fascinated, almost dazed. I 
kept saying to myself, 'This man who has lighted me 
upstairs with a candle, and carried me a blanket, 
and shown me where to find soap and towels, is the 
President of the United States! The President of 
the United States has done all these things for me. 
It is the greatest honour a man could have.' 

"Earlier in the same year, before the President 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 221 

moved from the White House to Oyster Bay, he 
went bear hmiting. That was just before Admiral 
Togo's victory over the Russian fleet, in the Sea 
of Japan, 

"Before leaving, the President sent for me and 
told me, in the presence of Mr. Taft, who was 
Secretary of War, that if anything of importance 
should come up during his absence, I was to see 
Mr. Taft about it, and that in the event of its being 
anything absolutely vital, Mr. Taft would know 
how to reach him. 

"Mr. Taft showed me a photograph hanging on 
the wall of the President's office, showing the wild 
country to which the President was going on his 
hunting trip. 

"I remarked playfully to him that I thought it 
advisable, at that time, that the President refrain 
from killing bears, whatever other animals he might 
see fit to slay. 

"Roosevelt, sitting at his desk, overheard me. 

"* What's that you are saying?' he asked. 

"I repeated what I had said to Mr. Taft. 

"'Why do you think I should not kill bears .^' 
demanded the President. 

'**Well, Mr. President,' I repHed, 'jou know that 
the various nations have their special symbols 
in the animal kingdom. America has the eagle, 
Britain the lion, France the cock, and Russia, well ' 

"He got up, laughing and came over to me. 

"'Nevertheless,' he said, T shall go right ahead 
and kill bears ! ' 



221 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

** Before he left on that hunting trip I went to see 
him and asked as a special favour that he give me 
the skin of one of the bears he should kill. 

" He refused, saying that if he were to start present- 
ing trophies to his friends they would all be after him. 

"At that I said to him, 'If I were asking this for 
myself, Mr. President, I would not pursue the matter 
further, but I am not asking it for myself. I want 
that bear skin for our Emperor.' 

"'Very well, then,' he said. 'You shall have it.' 

"He went off on his hunting trip, and came back. 
Then followed the negotiations for a cessation of 
hostiUties between Japan and Russia, and the 
Portsmouth Peace Conference, through which Roose- 
velt brought about the end of the war. 

"In August of the same year, 1905, I received 
this letter from him." 

The Viscount handed me the letter to read. It 
was as follows : 

Oyster Bay, N, Y,. 

August 30, 1905. 
Personal 
My dear Baron Kaneko: 

I cannot too highly state my appreciation of the wisdom 
and magnanimity of Japan, which make a fit crown to the prowess 
of her soldiers. Will you tell the Emperor that I shall take the 
liberty of sending him by you a bear skin? I want you soon 
to come out here and take lunch. 

Sincerely yours, 
Theodore Roosevelt. 

"Later," the Viscount went on, "I was asked by 
the President to come to Oyster Bay and select one 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN/ 223 

of the skins. I however did not wish to make the 
selection, so the President did that, picking out the 
largest skin of all and giving it to me for the Emperor 
Meiji. 

*'His Majesty was greatly pleased with the skin, 
not only because it was a trophy from the President 
himself, but because of the emblematic nature of 
the gift. That bearskin was in his library at the 
Imperial Palace in Tokyo as long as he hved." 

One of the most important Roosevelt letters 
shown me by Viscount Kaneko was on the subject 
of Japanese-American relations. As this letter 
is not included in the two-volume collection of 
Roosevelt correspondence compiled in such masterly 
fashion by Joseph Bucklin Bishop, Roosevelt's 
hterary executor, I have asked the permission of 
Mrs. Roosevelt and of Mr. Bishop to quote it here. 

It was as follows: 

THE WHITE HOUSE 
WASHINGTON 

May 23, 1907. 

Confidential 

My dear Baron Kaneko: 

I much appreciate your thought of Archie. The little fellow 
was very sick but is now all right. His mother and I have just 
had him on a short trip in the country. 

I was delighted to meet General Kuroki and Admiral Ijuin 
with their staffs. General Kuroki is, of course, one of the most 
illustrious men living. Through his interpreter, a very able 
young staff officer, I spoke to him a Httle about our troubles 
on the Pacific Slope. 



224 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

Nothing during my Presidency has given me more concern 
than these troubles. History often teaches by example, and I 
think we can best understand just what the situation is, and 
how it ought to be met, by taking into account the change in 
general international relations during the last two or three 
centuries. 

During this period all the civilized nations have made great 
progress. During the first part of it Japan did not appear in the 
general progress, but for the last half century she has gone ahead 
so much faster than any other nation that I think we can fairly 
say that, taking the last three centuries together, her advance 
has been on the whole greater than that of any other nation. 
But all have advanced, and especially in the way in which the 
people of each treat people of other nationalities. Two cen- 
turies ago there was the greatest suspicion and malevolence 
exhibited by all the people, high and low, of each European 
country, for all the people, high and low, of every other European 
country, with but few exceptions. The cultivated people of 
the different countries, however, had already begun to treat 
with one another on good terms. But when, for instance, the 
Huguenots were exiled from France, and great numbers of 
Huguenot workmen went to England, their presence excited the 
most violent hostihty, manifesting itself even in mob violence, 
among the EngKsh workmen. The men were closely allied 
by race and religion, they had practically the same type of 
ancestral culture, and yet they were unable to get on together. 
Two centuries have passed, the world has moved forward, 
and now there could be no repetition of such hostihties. In 
the same way a marvellous progress has been made in the re- 
lations of Japan with the Occidental nations. Fifty years ago 
you and I and those like us could not have travelled in one an- 
other's countries. We should have had very unpleasant and 
possibly very dangerous experiences. But the same progress 
that has been going on as between nations in Europe and their 
descendants in America and Australia, has also been going on 
as between Japan and the Occidental nations. In these times, 
then, gentlemen, all educated people, members of professions 
and the like, get on so well together that they not only travel 
each in the other's country, but associate on the most intimate 
terms. Among the friends whom I especially value I include 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 225 

a number of Japanese gentlemen. But the half century has 
been too short a time for the advance to include the labouring 
classes of the two countries, as between themselves. 

Exactly as the educated classes in Europe, among the several 
nations, grew to be able to associate together generations before 
it was possible for such association to take place among the men 
who had no such advantages of education, so it is evident we 
must not press too fast in bringing the labouring classes of Japan 
and America together. Aheady in these fifty years we have 
completely attained the goal as between the educated and the 
intellectual classes of the two countries. We must be content 
to wait another generation before we shall have made progress 
enough to permit the same close intimacy between the classes 
who have had less opportunity for cultivation, and whose lives 
are less easy, so that each has to feel, in earning its daily bread, 
the pressure of the competition of the other. I have become 
convinced that to try to move too far forward all at once is to 
incur jeopardy of trouble. This is just as true of one nation as 
of the other. If scores of thousands of American miners went 
to Saghalin, or of American mechanics to Japan or Formosa, 
trouble would almost certainly ensue. Just in the same way 
scores of thousands of Japanese labourers, whether agricultural 
or industrial, are certain, chiefly because of the pressure caused 
thereby, to be a source of trouble if they should come here or 
to Austraha. I mention Australia because it is a part of the 
British Empire, because the Australians have discriminated against 
continental immigration in favour of immigration from the 
British Isles, and have in eff'ect discriminated to a certain degree 
in favour of immigration from England and Scotland as against 
imjnigration from Ireland. 

My dear Baron, the business of statesmen is to try constantly 
to keep international relations better, to do away with causes of 
friction, and secure as nearly ideal justice as actual conditions 
will permit. I think that with this object in view and facing 
conditions not as I would like them to be, but as they are, the 
best thing to do is to prevent the labouring classes of either 
country from going in any numbers to the other. In a genera- 
tion I beheve all need of such prevention will have passed away; 
and at any rate this leaves free the opportunity for all those fit 
to profit by intercourse, to go each to the other's country. I 



226 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

have just appointed a conunission on general inunigration which 
will very possibly urge restrictive measurlfes as regards European 
immigration, and which I am in hopes will be able to bring 
about a method by which the result we have in view will be 
obtained with the minimum friction. 
With warm regards to the Baroness, believe me, 

Sincerely yours, 

Theodore Roosevelt. 
Baron Kentaro Kaneko, 

Tokyo, Japan. 

The foregoing letter may well be studied at this 
time when, through lack of the kind of statesmanship 
shown by Roosevelt, the Californian situation has 
become worse instead of better. 

Another letter shown me by Viscount Kaneko was 
written in pencil on a large sheet of yellow paper 
torn from a pad. It came from the African jungle, 
and ran as follows: 

Mid-Africa 

Sept. 10th, 1909. 
My dear Baron,* 

I have no facihties for writing here; but I must just send you a 
line of thanks for your welcome note. I have had a most 
interesting trip; my son Kermit has done particularly well. He 
has the spirit of a samurai! I greatly hope to visit Japan; 
but when it may be possible I can not say. 
With warm regards to the Viscountess,* believe me, 

Sincerely yours, 

Theodore Roosevelt. 

The last letter of the series was written on the 
stationery of the Kansas City Star, of which Roosevelt 

*Despite the fact that Roosevelt knew that Kemeko had been made 
a Viscount he addressed him in this letter by his old title. 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 227 

was an associate editor with an office in New York. 
The letter read: 

New York, Aug. 21, 1918. 
My dear Viscount Kaneko: 

I thank you fcr your letter; and Mrs. Roosevelt was as much 
touched by it as I was. Remember to give your son a letter 
to us when he comes here to go to Harvard. One of our news- 
papers, the Chicago Tribune, when the news was brought that 
Quentin was dead and two of his brothers wounded, spoke 
of my four sons as "American samurai." I was proud of the 
reference! As you say, all of us who are born are doomed to die. 
No man is fit to Kve who is afraid to die for a great cause. My 
Borrow for Quentin is outweighed by my pride in him. 

Faithfully your friend, 

Theodore Roosevelt. 

The foregoing, written less than five months before 
Colonel Roosevelt's death, was the last letter of the 
series shown me by Viscount Kaneko. 

Reading it I was reminded of what Colonel Roose- 
velt said to me as he lay on his bed in the hospital the 
last time I saw him. 

Speaking of his four sons in the war he said: 

"We have been an exceptionally united family. 
Come what may, we have many absolutely satisfying 
years together to look back upon." 



CHAPTER XIX 

Placidity and Sodans — Talk and Tea — American Business 
Methods versus Japanese — The American Housekeeper in 
Nippon — Japan's Problem — Population and Food — The 
Militarists — Land-Grahh ing — L iberalism — Em igrat ion — In- 
dustrialism — Examples of Inefficiency — ''Public Futilities'' 
— Comedies of the Telephone — The Cables 

ELSEWHERE I have said that the Japanese 
are generally hard workers; wherefore it 
may seem paradoxical to add that they are 
also leism^ely workers. But the paradox is not so 
great as it would seem. The hours of work are 
longer in Japan than in most other countries, but 
work is not so vigorously pressed. 

Without being in the least lazy, the Japanese take 
their time to everything. With masters and ser- 
vants, employers and workmen, it is much the same. 
They appear placid. They hold sodans, conferring 
and arranging matters with terrible precision. If 
you attempt to use the telephone you are prepared 
for a long struggle and a long wait. The clerks in 
the cable office act as if the cable had just been 
laid — as if your cablegram were the first one they 
had ever been called upon to send, and they didn't 
quite know how to handle it, or how much to 
charge. Often they are unable to make change. 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 229 

Sometimes even the railway ticket agents have no 
change. Business conferences are conducted over 
successive cups of pale green tea, and I am told 
that it is customary to begin them with talk on 
any topic other than the main one. In the lexicon 
of Japanese trade and commerce there is no such 
word as "snappy." 

The husthng American business man who tries to 
rush things through often arouses the Japanese bus- 
iness man's suspicion. What is he after? Why 
is he in such a hurry .^ There must be something 
behind it all. It is necessary to be particularly 
careful in dealing with such a man. Negotiations 
drag and drag until the American, if he be of nervous 
disposition, is driven nearly wild. And sometimes 
this results in his making a bad bargain merely for 
the sake of getting through. 

"I'm sorry I ever came to the Far East!" he will 
declare bitterly. "I feel that I am getting nothing 
accomplished over here — nothing!" Then he will 
tell you what is the trouble with the Japanese: 

"They are used to playing only with white chips ! " 

The American housekeeper in Japan, if she knows 
what nerves are, may have similar difficulties. Her 
Japanese servants will conduct her menage well 
enough if she lets them do it in their Japanese way, 
but if she attempts to run her home as she would 
run it in the United States, she is lost. It can't be 
done. I know of an American woman who could 
not get a cook because her efforts to Americanize 
her household had given her a bad reputation with 



230 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

the Cook's Guild. Another could get no sewing 
done, for a like reason. For all the servants and 
working people have their guilds, and news travels. 
Thus many an American housekeeper in Japan has be- 
come a nervous wreck. 

Yet on the other hand, numbers of American 
business men and their mves enjoy Japanese life, and 
only come home when it is necessary to give their 
children an American education. The men are 
successful and their homes are comfortable and well 
run. But always you will find that they are people 
of calm disposition: people having sufficient balance 
to adjust themselves to the customs of the country. 

The essential point seems to be that the Japanese 
view life in longer perspective than we do. Where 
we see ourselves as individuals having certain 
things to accomplish in a rather short life, they see 
themselves as mere links in an endless family chain. 
We are conscious of our parents and our children 
but they are conscious of ancestors, reaching back to 
the mists of antiquity, and of a posterity destined to 
people the nebulous vaults of the far-distant future. 

But while, from a philosophical standpoint, this 
way of looking at life may be quite as good as ours, 
or even better, still I beheve it tends to handicap 
the Japanese in meeting the m-gent material problems 
by which they are confronted. And though these 
problems are not so terrible as those of war-racked 
Europe, they are, if measured by any other standard, 
terrible enough. 

Japan's fundamental problem — ^the one out of 




Tai-no-ura — Tiny houses strewn about the margin of the 
sand, fishing boats drawn up in rows, and swarthy men and 
women busthng about among the nets and baskets 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 231 

which grow all other Japanese problems in which the 
world is interested— is, as I have said before, that 
of great density of population coupled with an 
inadequate supply of food and raw materials. Fifty 
years ago the population of Japan proper was less 
than 33,000,000. To-day it is more than 57,000,000. 
There has been an increase in five decades of more 
than 75 per cent., but there has been no corre- 
sponding increase in the country's arable land. 

In Japan itself there have been various theories as 
to how this problem should be met. The militarists, 
who are still very powerful, have in the past im- 
doubtedly favoured what we have come lately to call 
the Prussian system, the grabbing system : the system 
which has been followed in the Far East not by 
Japan alone but by England, Russia, France, and Ger- 
many — and by the United States (if in a form some- 
what more moderate) in the Hawaiian Islands, and 
the Philippines. 

"If the others do it," the Japanese militarists have 
argued, "why shouldn't we? Why shouldn't we, who 
need additional territory so much more than they do, 
grab on the continent of Asia for land to which our 
surplus population may be sent, and from which we 
may get food and raw materials?" 

To which the other nations answer: "Unfortu- 
nately for yoii, you came along too late. The good 
old grabbing days are gone. The world is radiant 
with a new international morality, and woe be 
imto those who offend against it! Germany tried 
it — see what happened to her!" 



232 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

Japan did see what happened to Germany and the 
lesson was not wasted on her. Nor was the least 
striking part of the lesson contained in America's 
exhibition of military might. And truth to tell, 
Japan needed such a lesson; for her victories over 
China and Russia had put her militarists in the 
ascendant, and had made them, and perhaps the 
bulk of their countrymen also, over-confident, with 
the result that Japan occasionally rattled the sabre 
in the Far East somewhat as Germany was wont 
to do in Europe. 

But although it cannot be denied that the Japanese 
militarists exhibited undue aggressiveness in China 
and Siberia during the late war, and although their 
actions since have not been altogether satisfactory 
to the rest of the world, there is good reason to sup- 
pose that their old-time dream of vast territorial 
aggrandizement has diminished, even though it may 
not have entirely faded from the minds of some of 
them. 

This new tendency toward moderation is due 
to the war's lesson and to the marked growth of 
liberal and anti-militarist sentiment among the 
Japanese people. The militarists, though they 
still control the Government, are less aggressive 
than they used to be, both because the Japanese 
public protests when too much aggressiveness is 
shown, and because the more intelligent members of 
the militaristic group now realize that if Japan 
were to bring on a great war she would inevitably 
be ruined. So, while the power and aggressiveness 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 233 

of this dangerous element slowly wane, the liberal 
element, led by some of the sanest and ablest men 
in Japan, steadily gains strength. 

The outcome of this struggle between the ad- 
vocates of force and those of fair dealing will, in 
my judgment, be determined largely by the course 
pursued by other nations. If, as we all hope, a new 
order of things is to grow out of the late war, then 
within a few years I believe we shall see the liberal 
group running Japan. But if, on the contrary, 
the world backslides, and the old selfish system 
is resumed, then the Japanese militarists will say 
to the people: "Well, you see that we were right 
after all!" 

But however these matters may turn out, I do not 
believe that Japan will ever fully settle her surplus 
population problem by means of emigration, whether 
to annexed territory, or to other countries. The 
Japanese do not like to leave home. There are 
only about 300,000 Japanese in China, for example, 
and they have not colonized to nearly the extent they 
might have in Siberia. If they do leave home they 
seek mild climates, but they are now barred from 
colonizing in the United States, Canada, and Aus- 
tralia and even when they settle in Mexico or South 
America one sees protests in our press. Yet if 
Japan's population is to remain static hundreds of 
thousands of her people must leave the islands every 
year. All considered, it seems more than improbable 
that they will ever emigrate in such a wholesale 
way. 



234 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

By what means, then, is the problem to be solved? 

Apparently the leaders of the small group that 
governs Japan came, some years ago, to the con- 
clusion that the best means for solving their difficul- 
ties lay in turning Japan into an industrial country. 
They determined to manufacture goods, export 
them, and with the proceeds pay for imports of 
raw materials and food — in short, to adopt the 
plan which England began to follow nearly a century 
ago, and which Belgium has also followed. Eng- 
land's situation was in many respects Hke that of 
Japan, for there were certain essential raw materials 
which she did not have either at home or in her 
possessions; and hke Japan she is unable to feed 
herself. With Belgium the situation was even worse 
than with England. Yet through industrializing 
themselves both countries have prospered greatly. 
Is it not then logical to suppose that by following a 
similar course Japan will likewise prosper? Recent 
statistics seem, moreover, to indicate that with in- 
dustrialization the birth-rate tends to decline. 

In attempting a great industrial programme Japan 
has two advantages : she has abundant cheap labour 
and a short haul to the great markets of Asia. 
Geographically we are her nearest competitor for 
Asiatic trade, yet we have at the very least, four 
thousand miles farther to carry our goods. Obvi- 
ously this is an immense disadvantage to us, and we 
are further handicapped by the high cost of our 
labour. 

Having us at so great a disadvantage in the matter 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN ^35 

of commerce with Asia, it would seem that Japan 
should have little difficulty in securing for herself 
the lion's share of the Asiatic trade. 

But it must not be supposed that Japan has as yet 
become sufficiently industrialized to solve her prob- 
lem. She must become a much greater manufactiu-- 
ing and exporting nation than she now is. And 
in order to accomplish that she must greatly improve 
in one particular: she must master much more 
thoroughly than she has so far mastered them, the 
horrid arts of "efficiency." 

I do not mean to imply that the Japanese are 
never efficient, but only that they are not always so 
efficient as they ought to be, and as they must be- 
come. I am aware, now, that I expected too much 
of them in this particular. Reports of their aston- 
ishing mihtary efficiency at the time of their war with 
Russia, caused me to think of them almost as super- 
men. And they are not that. Nor is any other 
race. 

It may be true that in mihtary matters they are 
highly efficient. Probably they are. My own 
observation as a traveller on their ships convinces 
me that they are efficient on the sea, and this opinion 
is supported by what American naval officers have 
told me of their navy and their naval men. I visited 
a huge cotton mill near Tokyo which was clearly 
a first-class institution of the kind; also I was much 
struck, in going through a penitentiary, by the evi- 
dences of their understanding of modern and en- 
lightened practice in the conduct of penal establish- 



236 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

ments ; and I might go on with a hst of other institu- 
tions which impressed me favourably. 

But that is not the side I wish here to bring out. 
On the contrary, I wish to call attention to the fact 
that the high degree of efficiency shown by the 
Japanese in certain instances serves but to empha- 
size their widespread inefficiency in others. 

In an earlier chapter I spoke of the fact that in 
Japan one sees three men instead of two in the cab 
of a locomotive, that hand-carts are used for water- 
ing city streets, and that more servants are required 
there than here in a house of given size. These are 
but minor items in the wholesale waste of labour. 
It is as if Japan said to herself: "I have all these 
people to look after and I must put as many of 
them as possible on every job." And that, in my 
judgment, is not the way Japan should look at it. 
Instead of putting on every job more people than are 
actually needed, she should endeavour to develop 
her industries to such a point that there will be a 
full, honest day's work for everyone. For, of course, 
her labour wastage keeps up her manufacturing and 
operating costs. 

An example of the way time is wasted may be seen 
wherever raihoad gangs are at work. They swing 
their picks to the accompaniment of a song, and the 
rhythm is taken from the slowest man. Wastage 
is also exhibited in the way a house is built. They 
build the framework of the roof upon the ground. 
Then they take it apart. Then they go up and 
put it together all over again, in place. A whole 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 237 

house is constructed in this way. The parts are 
not fashioned on the premises as the building goes 
up, but are made elsewhere and brought to the actual 
scene of building to be fitted together. The tiles are 
fastened to the roof with mud, but instead of carry- 
ing this mud up in bulk they toss it up from hand 
to hand, six men forming a chain for the purpose. 

Or again, to cite a very simple example of domestic 
inefficiency, consider their method of washing a 
kimono. Instead of laundering the garment all 
at once, they rip it apart, wash the pieces separately, 
dry them on a board, and sew them together again. 

In factory management also one sometimes finds 
the most surprising inefficiency. I know of a great 
manufacturing plant in Japan which, if you were 
to go through it, you would call thoroughly modern. 
The buildings are modern, the machinery is modern. 
But there is one thing missing, and it is a vital thing. 
The plant stands a good half mile from the railway 
line ; coal and raw materials are transported from 
car to factory in carts, or in baskets carried on the 
backs of coolies, and the finished product is removed 
in like manner. 

Though the cost of labour in Japan was trebled 
after the war, wages are still low as compared with 
other countries. But this fact, which should be 
taken advantage of in the struggle for world trade, 
is too often used only as an excuse for such waste of 
labour as I have pointed out. And it is because 
of this and similar inefficiencies that the Japanese 
now find themselves unable to compete in costs. 



238 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

in certain lines, with other nations, even though 
the labour of those other nations is much better paid. 

Among the things most criticized by visitors are the 
bad roads, both in the country and in the cities; the 
hotels, which except in a few places are poor (I am 
speaking only of the foreign-style hotels); and the 
miserable conditions of what the Japan Advertiser 
humorously refers to as "public futihties." 

Tokyo, with a transportation problem which ought 
easily to be solved, has utterly inadequate street-car 
service. The rush hour there is only saved from 
being a& terrible as the rush hour in New York by 
the lack of subterranean features. 

But it is in all matters having to do with communi- 
cations that Japanese inefficiency is most strikingly 
brought to the notice of strangers. The postal ser- 
vice is poor, the cable service is expensive and absurdly 
slow (when I was in Japan it took about ten days to 
cable to America and get an answer back), and the 
telephone service is unbelievably awful. All these, 
like the railroads, are owned and operated by the 
Government. 

I began to suspect their telephones when I saw the 
old full-bosomed wall instruments they use, with 
bell-cranks to be rung; but little did I then guess the 
full measm-e of their telephonic backwardness. 

It is like opera bouffe. Though the demand for 
new telephones far exceeds the supply, the Govern- 
ment makes no appreciable effort to remedy the 
situation. Every year an absurdly small number 
of hues is added to the existing system. These are 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 239 

assigned by lot among those who have applied for 
them. Thus, if a man be lucky in the draw, he 
may get a telephone within two or three years. But 
I know one gentleman in Tokyo who was not lucky 
in the draw. At the ripe age of sixty-seven he 
applied to the Government for an additional office 
telephone. The instrument was installed shortly 
after he had celebrated his eightieth birthday. 
Long may he live to use it! 

If one be in a hurry to have a telephone put in, 
one does not apply to the authorities, but attacks 
the problem in a manner more direct — either through 
a telephone broker or through advertising. Thus 
one can get in contact with a person wishing to sell 
an installation and a number. The number must, 
however, be in the exchange serving the district in 
which the telephone is to be placed. 

Though this is a very expensive method, it is 
the one usually employed in Tokyo and other large 
cities. A telephone for the business district of the 
capital may cost as much as twelve hundred dollars, 
but in a residential district it will be considerably 
cheaper — five hundred dollars or less. 

A curious detail of this business is that low numbers 
bring the highest price in the open market. This, 
I was informed, is because green operators, in process 
of being broken-in, sit at that end of the central 
switchboard at which the high numbers invariably 
occur, thus guaranteeing the owners of high numbers 
a grade of service calculated to drive them to the 
madhouse. 



240 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

It must not be imagined that the Japanese are 
content with their telephone service. They are not. 
For some time prior to my arrival in Japan the press 
had been demanding a reform, and at last it was 
announced that action was about to be taken to 
improve matters. 

But all that happened was this : Instead of increas- 
ing the service, the government functionaries started 
a campaign to discourage the use of telephones. 
Up to that time, unlimited service had been given. 
Now, however, a flat charge of two sen (about one 
cent) per call was announced, the theory being that 
many persons would think twice before spending two 
sen on an idle telephonic conversation. 

After watching the new plan in operation for a 
few days the telephone authorities jubilantly an- 
nounced that it was a great success — the number 
of calls had appreciably diminished. Apparently 
it never occurred to them that the result of such a 
policy, carried to its logical conclusion, would 
be to eliminate the telephone entirely. 

With the Japanese cables the trouble has been 
largely due to congestion. The use of two important 
lines was cut off by the war, and as service on these 
lines has not up to the time of writing been resumed, 
owing to the disorganization of Russia and Germany, 
a heavy strain has been placed upon the trans- 
pacific cables. I am assured, however, that con- 
ditions would not be so bad as they are if the 
Japanese were entirely eflficient in their handling of 
cable business, and my own experiences with cable 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 241 

messages, while there, would seem to indicate that 
this is true. 

Moreover, at the time when cable congestion 
was at its worst, the Japanese refused to operate 
their transpacific wireless for more than seven hours 
a day; and even then they would take business 
only for San Francisco and vicinity, for the reason, 
it was explained, that they did not wish to be both- 
ered with the details of figuring the rates to various 
parts of the United States. Lately they have in- 
creased their service to cover the states of California, 
Oregon and Washington; but that, at the time of 
writing, is as far as they have consented to extend it. 



CHAPTER XX 

The Average American and International Affairs — The 
Vagueness of the Orient — A Definition by Former Am- 
bassador Morris— ''They say''— The ''Yellow Perir— In- 
ternational Insults — Physiognomy — What the Japanese 
Should Learn About Us — Our Race Problems — Racial In- 
tegrity — Assimilation — Calif ornian Methods — The Two 
Sound Arguments Against Oriental Immigration 

If pubKc opinion is fed with distorted facts, unworthy 
suspicions, or alarming rumours; if every careless utter- 
ance by thoughtless and insignificant men is to be given 
prominence in print; if every casual difference of view 
is to be magnified into a crisis, sober judgment and de- 
liberate action become impossible. — John W. Davis, 
former Ambassador to the Court of St. James's. 

CONCERNED with making a living, the 
Average American has as a rule neither the 
time nor the inchnation to study international 
affairs. He expects his government to see to such 
things for him. He has no interest in what his gov- 
ernment is doing with regard to other nations unless 
his personal feelings are in some way involved. Thus 
if he be a German- American he may take cognizance 
of our relations with Germany ; or if he be a Russian- 
American he may desire that we recognize the so- 
called government of Lenine and Trotzky; or again, 
if he be an Irish- American he may wish the President 

242 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 243 

of the United States to go personally to London and 
knock the British premier's hat off. But if he be sim- 
ply an average unhyphenated American the chances 
are that he is disgusted with the clatter of the hyphen- 
ates and bored with the whole business of foreign 
relations and race problems. His main interest in gov- 
ernmental aifairs at the present time has nothing to 
do with foreign relations but comes much closer to 
home. He is tired of paying heavy taxes, tired of 
paying exorbitantly for the necessities of life. He 
wants his government to remedy those two things. 
Then, because he is sick of hyphenated citizens and 
internal race problems, he wants immigration stopped. 
The Orient is all vague to htm. If he does not 
live on the Pacific Coast or in some large city where 
Japanese have settled, he may never have laid eyes 
upon a Japanese. Or if he has seen Japanese over 
here he may have seen them in the farming districts 
of the Pacific slope. Whether he has seen them or 
not, he has gathered some impression of them through 
newspaper accounts of the trouble there has been 
about them in California. He understands that 
their customs, religion, and food are unlike his — which 
may be taken as implying a certain lack of merit in 
them. He understands that Japanese women and 
children work in the fields. His own women and 
children do not work in the fields, but wear silk 
stockings, chew gum, and go to the movies — all of 
which, of course, counts against the Japanese, since 
to work in the fields is in these times almost un- 
American. And of course it is stiU more un-American 



244 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

to do what the Japanese labourers did in California 
until the patriotic Calif ornians stopped them; namely 
to save money and buy farms. 
Then there is this business about "picture-brides" 
— my Average American may have heard vaguely 
about that, though probably he does not know that 
the Japanese Government, in deference to our wishes, 
no longer allows picture-brides to come here. He 
would not think of such a thing as picking out a wife 
by photograph. None of his friends would do it, 
either. 

It may be well here to state the actual nature of 
the issue in California. This can be done briefly 
in no better way than by quoting an editorial pub- 
lished not long since in the New York World, a 
newspaper remarkable for the intelligence with which 
it has generally treated the Japanese question. 

The World's editorial was published apropos an 
address made by Mr. Roland S. Morris, who served 
under the Wilson Administration as ambassador 
to Tokyo, and whose admirable work in Tokyo might 
have borne good fruit but for our unfortunate habit 
of reheving ambassadors, however able, when the 
political party to which they belong goes out of power. 

Said the World: 

In his address at the University Club on the Japanese issue in 
California, Roland S. Morris, American Ambassador to Tokyo, 
refrained from discussing the merits of the case and merely 
defined the question in accordance with the facts. It is only in 
the light of the facts that a sound decision can be reached where 
argument and judgment run along the hne of fixed prejudices. 

As Mr. Morris explained, Japan does not question the right 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 245 

of the United States, subject to its treaty obligations, to legislate 
on the admission of foreigners. While under the treaty of 1911 
Japanese were granted full rights of residence and admission, the 
Tokyo Government accepted the condition that it would con- 
tinue limiting emigration from Japan to the United States in 
compliance with the "Gentleman's Agreement" of 1908.* 

The Japanese Government and people are not seeking the 
removal of restrictions on immigration. The Japanese are not 
ehgible to American citizenship, but they have enjoyed in this 
country the same personal and property rights as other aliens. 
It is here that the friction has been created by the action of 
California. 

In 1913 California deprived those aliens who were ineligible to 
citizenship of certain property rights. In 1920, in Mr. Morris's 
words, "this legislation was amplified by an initiative and referen- 
dum act." What he does not state is that this measure was in- 
tended to discriminate against the Japanese in buying and leasing 
land. 

Hence the protests of the Government at Tokyo. The Japan- 
ese object to what they regard as the injustice of being set apart 
as a separate class, suffering political disabilities and deprived of 
rights other aliens enjoy. 

Mr. Morris leaves the issue open when he says: "The Japan- 
ese protest presents to all our people this very definite question: 
In the larger view of our relations with the Orient, is it wise thus 
to classify aliens on the basis of their eligibility to citizenship? " 

In pursuance of its local ends, California has adopted a provo- 
cative position and played into the hands of Japanese jingoes and 
militarists. 

Lamentably, these simple facts have been cast 
adrift upon a stormy sea of Californian prejudice. 
That sea, I fear, so fills the eye of the Average Amer- 
ican that oftentimes he fails entirely to descry the 



*The "limiting" here referred to includes the stoppage of labour 
emigration, not by us, but by the Japanese Government, which 
took this amiable and dignified means of avoiding a direct issue on 
the subject of racial equality. 



246 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

shipwrecked waifs of Truth out there upon their 
little raft. Were he to attempt to state his views 
upon the California question he would in all proba- 
bility quote as the source of his information that 
favourite authority, "They say." 

"They say Japanese inunigrants are flooding into 
California and buying up the farming land; they say 
the Japanese have large families; they say they 
don't make desirable neighbours; they say that if 
things keep on this way they will ultimately control 
the state. Certainly we don't want any part of 
our country dominated by foreigners." The less 
familiar he is with certain Californian traits the more 
he is likely to conclude: "I guess it must be true 
or the Californians wouldn't be making such a row 
about it." 

His tendency to reason thus may be enhanced by 
the recollection of a phrase he has heard : the "Yellow 
Peril" — one of the most poisonous phrases ever 
coined. He does not know that the term was Made 
in Germany for the very purpose of exciting inter- 
national suspicion and ill-will. He may not be aHve 
to our real Yellow Peril — that of the yellow press — 
but may, upon the contrary, actually acquire his 
views on international affairs from such inflammatory 
sheets as those published by Wilham Randolph 
Hearst, himself a son of California and a leader in 
the anti-Japanese chorus. 

My Average American knows little of Californian 
poHtics, and nothing of politics in Japan. He does 
not realize that Californian politicians are largely 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 247 

responsible for the stirring up of anti-Japanese senti- 
ment, precisely as earlier politicians of the state 
were responsible for anti-Chinese sentiment, and 
that in both cases vote-getting was a chief motive. 
It is sometimes very convenient for a demagogue to 
have a voteless alien race at hand to bully. 

My Average American is probably unaware that 
more than two hundred thousand Californian voters 
cast their ballots against the discriminatory laws 
passed in November, 1920, even though the press of 
California was generally closed to spokesmen repre- 
senting sentiment opposed to undue harshness toward 
the Japanese. Still less is he likely to be aware that 
politicians in Japan know all the tricks familiar to 
their Californian counterparts; that they, too, know 
how to gather votes by stirring up race feeling. So, 
when he sees in his newspaper-headhnes that a 
Japanese whose name he has never before heard, 
but who, the paper says, is high in politics, has 
been talking of war with the United States, he be- 
gins to wonder whether those people over there 
are not, perhaps, looking for trouble. And when 
he reads of Japan's great naval building prograname 
the notion becomes a little more concrete in his 
mind. 

Of course he does not understand that, meanwhile, 
in Japan there has been going on a process precisely 
similar: that hostile and insulting things said by 
American politicians are cabled to Japan and pub- 
lished there, where they carry undue weight; and 
that while we are reading of Japan's naval programme 



248 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

and wondering what it signifies, Japan is reading of 
ours, and likewise wondering. 

That any one could suspect the United States of 
aggressive piu*pose is inconceivable to my Average 
American. Though the United States has lately 
shown that she can fight, she has also shown she is 
loath to do it. The Average American has no feeling 
of hostility toward Japan, and the idea of war with 
Japan seems to him absurd to the point of being 
fantastic. There is, as he conceives it, but one way 
in which such a war could be started, and that is by 
Japanese aggression. 

Assure him that the exact reverse of this view 
represents Japanese sentiment and you will stupefy 
him. "You must be wrong about that," he will tell 
you. "The Japanese must know that we hate war 
and that we have no more desire to fight them than 
to select our wives out of a photograph album." 
And he may add something about Japanese "in- 
scrutabihty." 

That is another point: 

When my Average American meets a stranger of 
his own race, or of almost any European nationality, 
he can form, from the stranger's physiognomy, 
some estimate of his character. It is a type of face 
he understands. But the Oriental physiognomy 
baffles him. He cannot read it. To him it is as a 
book in an unknown tongue — a very symbol for 
mystery. 

That it may be equally difficult for the Japanese 
to judge of us would not occur to him. Our faces are 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 249 

— well, they are regular faces; there is nothing queer 
about them. We aren't queer in any way. It is 
other people who are queer. 

If certain simple facts about Japan were under- 
stood in the United States, and certain simple facts 
about the United States were understood in Japan, 
it might not follow that the two nations would there- 
after cordially approve of aU each other's policies 
and acts, but it ought certainly to follow that they 
could view such policies and acts with eyes more 
tolerant. 

You and I, for instance, might not approve the 
aggressive methods of some canvasser we had en- 
countered, but if we knew that his wife and family 
were crowded into a single room wondering where 
to-morrow's breakfast would come from, we could 
forgive the man a good deal. Similarly, if he were 
to see you or me bulldozing a helpless guest in our 
own house, his disapproval of our action might be 
mitigated if he understood that the entire neighbour- 
hood had fallen into the habit of using our house as 
a common camping ground for undesirable members 
of their families, and that we had been goaded by 
these unwelcome visitors into a state of desperation. 

What are the essential things for the Japanese to 
learn about us? 

They must get a better understanding of our var- 
ious race problems. They must realize that, impor- 
tant as the problem involving their settlers on the 
Pacific Coast appears to them, it is to us a minor 



250 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

problem — being one of the least of a number of race- 
problems with which we are confronted. 

They must know that our population is derived 
from all the countries of Europe. And they must 
be made aware that though we have in the past 
viewed this situation with fatuous complacency, we 
no longer do so. Our old beautiful theory that the 
United States was properly a refuge for the oppressed 
of all other lands has lost a wheel and gone into the 
ditch. Some of us have even begun to suspect that 
the oppressed of other lands were in certain instances 
oppressed for what may have been good and sufficient 
cause. We have found that some of these individ- 
uals, on arriving in the United States, become so 
exhilarated by our free air that from oppressed they 
turn into oppressors who would fain take our govern- 
ment out of our hands and run it in the interest of 
the Kaiser, the Soviets, or of Mr. De Valera's inter- 
esting Republic. 

With these and other hyphenated racial problems 
we are continually contending. We no sooner meet 
one than another arises. Now we must needs create 
an Alien Property Custodian to take a hand. Now 
we deport a band of the more violent Bolsheviks. 
Now we summon glaziers to put new windows in the 
Union Club in New York, where the British flag 
(flying in conamemoration of the landing of the 
Pilgrim Fathers, three hundred years ago) was hailed 
with bricks by members of a congregation emerging 
from St. Patrick's Cathedral, across the way. 

We used to speak with loving confidence of some- 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 251 

thing called the "Melting Pot," which was supposed 
to make newly arrived immigrants into good Amer- 
ican citizens. Sometimes it did so, but we have 
lately learned that its by-product consisted too often 
of bricks and bombs. 

We do not boast about the Melting Pot any more. 
Having overloaded it and found it could not do the 
work we put upon it, we want time in which to catch 
up with back orders, as it were. Meanwhile no new 
ones must be taken. 

But while the problems growing out of European 
immigration have of recent years troubled us most, 
they do not constitute our greatest race problem. 
Always in the background of our consciousness, like 
a volcano quiescent but very much ahve, looms our 
gigantic negro problem — the problem which for the 
sins of our slave-importing and slave-holding fore- 
fathers we inherit, and from which, according to our 
characteristic way of "meeting" great quiescent 
problems, we are always endeavouring to hide. For 
it is not our way to advance upon a bull and take him 
by the horns. If a bull seeks to be taken by the 
horns he must do the advancing. We Americans 
all know this about ourselves, but it is our way to 
excuse the failing by boasting of the tussle we wiU 
give the buU if he ever gets us in a corner. 

There is no need here even to outline the tragedies 
of the negro problem, but there is one aspect of the 
matter which should be spoken of. Experience has 
shown that whereas immigrants from Europe can 
ultimately be absorbed into what we may term the 



252 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

American race, the negro, wearing the badge of his 
race in the pigment of his skin, is not to be ab- 
sorbed. Even the octoroon is clearly distinguishable 
from the white. The negro race must, so far as the 
future can be read, remain a race apart. 

The case of the Indian affords another example of 
the failure of two races, separated by colour and other 
physical markings, to fuse. In the early days of 
this country's settlement, when the Indians strongly 
predominated, they did not absorb the then few 
whites. When the time came that there was an 
equal number of Indians and whites, still they did not 
fuse. And now, when but a handful remains of the 
once mighty Indian nations, that remnant stiU re- 
tains its racial integrity. 

Here, however, is involved no question of racial 
inferiority. Whites and Indians have to some small 
extent intermarried, and when both parties represent 
the best of their respective races, not only is there no 
sense of degradation to either, but the white descen- 
dants of such aUiances are often proud of their Indian 
blood. 

In this whole matter of the fusibility of races there 
is, then, no basic principle of inferiority or superiority. 
Such questions are here as extraneous as in the case 
of oil and water, which though they will not mix are 
not therefore designated as a superior and an inferior 
fluid. 

The fact is that some inner consciousness tells us 
that the characteristic physical markings of the chief 
races of the world were not given them for nothing; 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 253 

that Nature intended the broad hnes of race to be 
maintained; and we are told that crosses which dis- 
regard these natural race divisions are usually penal- 
ized by deterioration. 

To find in this truth the faintest implication of 
insult would be absurd. It would be as ridiculous to 
resent the statement that **like seeks like," as to re- 
sent the statement that "honesty is the best policy." 

No people insists more firmly than the Japanese 
upon racial integrity. The most fanatical English 
horseman could hardly be more finicky about the 
maintenance of pure thoroughbred stock. Marriages 
between native Japanese and foreigners are not en- 
couraged and seldom occur. Among the upper classes 
they almost never occur. A citizen of Japan cannot 
enter into a legal marriage with a Korean or a For- 
mosan, although Korea and Formosa are Japanese 
colonies. (I am informed that steps were taken in 
1918 to make such marriages legal, but up to the time 
of writing this has not been accomplished.) 

The law regulating the acts of the Japanese Im- 
perial Family does not permit the marriage of mem- 
bers of that family with persons other than those of 
Japanese Imperial or noble stock. This law had to 
be amended in order to make possible the marriage, 
several years ago, of a Japanese Imperial princess, the 
daughter of Prince Nashimoto, with the heir to the 
Korean Royal Family — which family, by the way, 
now ranks as a sort of Japanese nobility. The mar- 
riage, it may be added, was unpopular with the 
Japanese masses, because of their strong feehng that 



254 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

Japanese blood, and especially Japanese Imperial 
blood, should not be diluted. Had the prince been a 
European it is not improbable that a louder protest 
would have been heard, for the Japanese does not, as 
a rule, look with favour upon Eurasians. There are 
exceptions, but in the main the man or woman of 
mixed Oriental and Occidental blood hves socially 
upon an international boundary line, on neither side 
of which is exuberant cordiality displayed. 

The intelligent and patriotic sentiment of the 
United States is at present overwhemingly in favour 
of the stoppage of all immigration; and even if there 
comes a time when it is felt that the floodgates may 
again be opened, they will not, if wisdom prevails, 
be opened wide, but will admit only such aHens as 
are susceptible to assimilation. 

What does assimilation mean? 

It means that the immigrant shall lose his racial 
identity in ours. It means that he shall be sus- 
ceptible to absorption into the body of our race 
through marriage, or at the very least that his chil- 
dren shall be susceptible to such absorption. And 
this in turn means, among other things, that he shall 
have no ineradicable physical characteristics which 
strongly differentiate him from our national physical 
type. 

This is one chief reason why, in my opinion, Orien- 
tals should never settle in the United States. 
Broadly speaking, they are no more suited to become 
citizens of the United States than are we to become 
citizens of Japan or China. 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 255 

Another chief reason why Japanese labour inunigra- 
tion is not acceptable to us is that the Japanese can 
live on less than we can. They are willing to work 
longer hours for less pay. Also they are thrifty. 
These are virtues; but the fact that they are virtues 
does not make Japanese competition the more wel- 
come to white labour. 

This point also should readily be appreciated by 
the people of Japan, who find it generally necessary 
to exclude Chinese labour on precisely the same 
ground — that is, because a Chinaman can five on 
less than a Japanese, and can consequently work for 
lower wages. 

Had Cahfornia, in her desire to prevent the further 
acquirement of land by Japanese settlers, rested her 
case on these two clean-cut issues: namely, unassimil- 
ability and economic necessity; had she refrained from 
vituperation, taking up the matter purely on its 
merits ; had she recognized her duty as a state to the 
Nation and cooperated with the Washington Govern- 
ment, instead of ignoring the international bearing 
of the question and embarrassing the Government by 
radical and independent state action; and had she, 
above all, shown any disposition to deal as justly 
with the Japanese as the circumstances would permit; 
then, without a doubt, the entire Nation would have 
been behind California. And what is perhaps as 
important, the whole matter could then have been 
presented to Japan in a reasonable and temperate 
manner, without offence, yet with arguments the 
force of which Japan could hardly escape. 



256 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

But it is not apparently in the nature of the average 
Californian to go at things in a moderate way. 
Moderation is not one of his traits. His father, or 
grandfather, was a sturdy pioneer whose habit it was 
to express resentment with a bowie-knife and answer 
antagonism with a Colt .45. In the descendant these 
family traits are modified but not extinguished. If 
he does not approve of the manner in which an amia- 
ble alien wears his eyebrows he is likely to call him 
something — ^without a smile. 

Antagonism? Why should he mind antagonism.^ 
He likes it. He feels the need of it. He must have 
something to combat — something to neutrahze the 
everlasting sunshine and the cloying sweetness of the 
orange-blossom and the rose. 

And alas, there is Senator Hiram Johnson, of whom 
the New York Times recently remarked that, "he 
would lose his proprietary pohtical issue if the 
differences with Japan were peacefully composed. 
And we know," the Times continued, "that it is bet- 
ter to meet a bear robbed of her whelps than a poli- 
tician deprived of his issue. ' ' And again, alas, there is 
ex-Senator Phelan — though the ex-, which has recently 
been added to his title, may tend, to some extent, to 
moderate his effectiveness as a baiter of the Japanese. 
And thrice alas, there is Mr. V. S. McClatchy, the 
Sacramento apiarist, whose "Bee" is trained to sting 
the Japanese wherever it will hm-t most. 

That the difficulties between the two coimtries 
must be harmonized, all thoughtful citizens of both 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 257 

will agree. For myself, I do not see how this can be 
fully accomplished without some modification of the 
present discriminatory alien land law of California — 
a law which, aimed at one ahen group alone, is 
not in consonance with the American sense of justice. 

The Japanese labourers who are already legally 
here — ^many of them originally brought here, by the 
way, at the instance of CaUfornian employers — 
should be treated with absolute fairness. They 
should not be deprived of the just rewards of their 
industry and thrift. Their racial virtues should be 
appreciated and might well be emulated. 

It should be clear, however, that for our good and 
the good of the Japanese, no further immigrants of 
their labouring class should ever enter the United 
States. And it should be equally clear that in such 
a statement there is no cause for offence. 

The United States does not invariably act wisely. 
Neither does Japan. But the American heart is in 
the right place, and so is the Japanese heart. 

Let us try, then, on both sides, to look at these 
problems with honest and disinterested eyes. Let 
us try to get each other's point of view. Let us even 
go so far as to make due allowance for the frailty of 
human nature, as exhibited on both sides of the 
Pacific. 

But let us have no thought of straining good 
will by attempting to become on any larger scale 
inmates of the same house, dwellers under the same 
national roof. 




CHAPTER XXI 

Some Reflections on New York Hospitality — And on the 
Hospitality of Japan — Letters of Introduction — Bowing — 
How Japanese Politeness is Sometimes Misunderstood — 
Entertaining Foreigners — Showing the Country at its Best — 
What is the Mysterious '' Truth'' About Japan? — Japanese 
versus Chinese — Leadership in the Far East — Will Japan 
Become a Moral Leader? — A ''First-Class Power'' — The 
New ''Long Pants" — How to Treat Japan — The Wisdom 
of Roosevelt and Root. 

VIGOROUS and sustained display of hos- 
pitality must always be astonishing to one 
who calls New York his home; for New York 
is without doubt the most inhospitable city in the 
world. In the jaded hotel-clerk, the bored box- 
office man, and the fish-eyed head waiter, the spirit 
of its welcome is personified. 

There is no dissimulation. The stranger is as 
welcome in New York as he feels. If there be a 
hotel room, a theatre seat, or a restaurant table dis- 
engaged, he may have it, at a price. If all are oc- 
cupied he may, so far as New York cares, step 
outside and, with due regard to the season and the 
traffic regulations, die of sunstroke or perish in a 
snowdrift — ^whereupon his case comes automatically 
under the supervision of the Street-Cleaning De- 
partment — and whatever else that Department 

S58 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 259 

may leave lying around the New York streets, it 
does not leave them littered with defunct strangers. 
Space in our city is too valuable. 

The visitor arriving in New York with a letter 
of introduction to some gentleman who is important, 
or who believes he is, may expect a few minutes' 
talk with the gentleman in his office, and may regard 
it as a delicate attention if his host refrains from 
fidgeting. 

Should the stranger have some information which 
the New Yorker desires to possess, he may find 
himself invited out to lunch. They will lunch at a 
club in the top of a down-town skyscraper. Or if 
the letter of introduction has a social flavour, the 
outlander will presently receive by mail, at his 
hotel, a guest's card to a club up-town. 

Let him make bold to visit this club and he will 
find there no one to speak to save a rigid doorman 
and some waiters. The doorman will tell him coldly 
where to check his hat and coat. He will see a few 
members in the club, but will not know them, nor 
will they desire to know him. All New Yorkers 
know more people than they want to, anyway. 
The stranger with a guest's card to a New York 
club is as comfortable there as a cat in a cathedral. 

In the West it is different. 

And again it is different in Japan. 

Those who go well introduced to Japan meet there 
an experience such as is hardly to be encountered 
in any other land. Japanese courtesy and hospital- 
ity are fairly stupefying to the average Anglo- 



260 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

Saxon. The Occidental mind is staggered by the 
mere externals. 

You see two Japanese meet— two gentlemen, 
two ladies, or a lady and a gentleman. They face 
each other at fairly close range. Then, as though 
at some signal unperceived by the foreigner, they 
bow deeply from the waist, their heads passing 
with so small a space between that one half expects 
them to bump. Three times in succession they 
bow in this way, simultaneously, their hands sUpping 
up and down their thighs, in front, hke pistons 
attached to the walking-beam of a side-wheeler. 

In conjunction with this profound and protracted 
bowing, especially when the bowers are Japanese 
of the old school, or are unaccustomed to associate 
with foreigners, the bystander will oftentimes hear a 
sibilant sound made by the drawing in of air through 
the lips. According to the Japanese idea, such 
sounds denote appreciation as of some dehcious 
spiritual flavour. This ancient form of politeness 
is, however, being discarded by sophisticated young 
Japan for the reason that foreigners find it peculiar; 
and the practice of audibly sucking in food as an 
expression of gustatory ecstasy is also going out of 
fashion for the same reason. The old ways are, 
nevertheless, held to by many an aristocrat of middle 
age, or older. 

The American, accustomed to regard hissing as a 
sign of disapproval, and noisy eating as ill-bred, 
is naturally startled on first encountering these 
manifestations. Japanese bowing, when directed 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 261 

at him, he finds disconcerting. He may wish to be 
as pohte as the pohtest, but he has in his repertory 
nothing adequate to offer in return for such an 
obeisance. 

In this country we have never taken to bowing as 
practised in some other lands. Our men look 
askance at Latin males when they hft their hats 
to one another in salutation, and it may be observed 
that some of us tend to slight the lifting of the hat 
a little bit even when saluting ladies, clutching 
furtively at the brim and perhaps loosening the 
hat upon the head, then hastily jamming it back 
in place. 

The fact is that very few American men have pol- 
ished manners. We rebel at anything resembling 
courtliness. It makes us feel *' silly." The dancing- 
school bow we were compelled to practise in the days 
of our otherwise happy youth was a nightmare to us, 
and now in our maturity we have a sense of doing 
something utterly inane when, at a formal dinner 
party, it devolves upon us to present an arm to a lady, 
as if to assure her of protection through the perils 
of the voyage from drawing room to table. We 
much prefer to amble helter-skelter to the dining 
room. 

In these matters, then, as in so many others, we 
find ourselves at the opposite pole from the Japanese; 
and though Americans of the class willing to ap- 
preciate merits of kinds they themselves do not 
possess feel nothing but admiration for Japanese 
courtesy in its perfection, it sometimes happens, 



262 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

lamentably enough, that others, less intelhgent, 
going to the Orient, utterly misread the meaning 
of Japanese politeness, mistaking it for servility, 
which it most emphatically is not. Far from 
being servile it is a proud pohteness — a pohteness 
grounded upon custom, sensitiveness of nature, 
delicacy of feehng, which cause the possessor to 
expect in others a like sensitiveness and delicacy 
and to make him wish to outdo them in tact and 
consideration. 

Nor does the failure of certain Americans to 
appreciate Japanese courtesy and hospitahty for 
what it is, stop here. Our yellow press and or- 
ganized Japanese-haters, aware that the higher 
hospitality of Japan has oftentimes an official or 
semi-oflficial character, are not satisfied to seek a 
simple explanation for the fact, but prefer to discern 
in it something artful and sinister. 

It is perfectly true that the stranger going to 
Japan with good letters of introduction meets a 
group composed almost entirely of government 
officials, big business men, and their families. It is 
also true that he is likely to meet a selected group 
of such men. The reason for this is simple. While 
English is the second language taught in Japanese 
schools, and while many Japanese can speak some 
broken Enghsh, there are still relatively few men, 
and still fewer women, who have been educated 
abroad and are sufficiently familiar with foreign 
languages, customs, and ideas to feel easy when en- 
tertaining foreigners. This class is, moreover, still 




Nor could a grande dame in an opera box have exhibited more 
aplomb than she did when I photographed her 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 263 

further limited by the financial burden of extensive 
entertaining. 

Thus it happens that there exists in Japan a 
social group which may be hkened to a loosely or- 
ganized entertainment committee, with the result 
that most Americans who are entertained in that 
country meet, broadly speaking, the same set of 
people. 

The Japanese are entirely frank in their desire 
to interest the world in Japan. The Government 
maintains a bureau for the purpose of encouraging 
tourists to visit the country and making travel easy 
for them. The great Japanese steamship companies, 
the Toyo Kisen Kaisha and Nippon Yusen Kaisha, 
are energetic in seeking passenger business. Journ- 
alists, authors, men of affairs and others likely 
to have influence at home, are especially encouraged 
to visit Japan. The feeling of the Japanese is that 
there exists in the United States a prejudice against 
them, and that the best way to overcome this is 
to show Japan to Americans and let them form 
their own conclusions. They are proud of their 
country and they believe that those who become 
acquainted with it will think well of it. 

Some Americans charge them with endeavouring 
to show things at their best, as if to do that were 
a sly sin. 

The attitude of the Japanese in this matter may 
be likened to that of a man who owns a home in 
some not very accessible region, the advantages 
of which are doubted by his friends. Being proud 



264 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

of his place the owner is hospitable. He urges 
those he knows to come and see it. 

When his guests arrive he does not begin by 
taking them to look at the sick cow, or the corner 
behind the barn where refuse is dumped, but marches 
them to the west verandah — the verandah with the 
wonderful view. 

To the average person such a procedure would 
seem entirely normal. Yet there are critics of 
Japan who do not see it in that light. Their atti- 
tude might be hkened to that of someone who, 
when taken to the verandah to see the view, de- 
clares that the view is being shown not on its own 
merits, but because the host has cut the butler's 
throat and does not wish his guests to notice the 
body lying under the parlour table. 

Let an American of any influence go to Japan, 
be cordially received there, form his impressions, 
and return with a good word to say for the islands 
and the people, and the professional Japanese- 
haters have their answer ready. The man has been 
victimized by "propaganda'.' He has been flattered 
by social attentions, fuddled with food and drink, 
reduced to a state of idiocy, and in that state "per- 
sonally conducted" through Japan in a manner so 
crafty as to prevent his stumbling upon the "Truth." 

The precise nature of this "Truth" is never re- 
vealed. It is merely indicated as some vague awfulness 
behind a curtain carefuQy kept drawn. 

Having so often heard these rumours I went to 
Japan in a supicious frame of mind. Arriving 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 265 

there, I made it my business to dive behind whatever 
looked hke a veil of mystery. As the reader who 
has followed me thus far will be aware, I found a 
number of mysteries — the fascinating mysteries of 
an old and peculiar civilization, out of which an in- 
teresting modernism had rapidly grown. 

I was considerably entertained in Japan; my 
sightseeing was oftentimes facilitated by Japanese 
friends; but the significant fact is that no one ever 
tried to prevent my seeing anything I wished to. 
And I wished to see everything, good and bad. 1 
visited the lowest slums, a penitentiary, a poorhouse, 
a hospital, and some factories. I asked questions. 
Sometimes they were embarrassing questions — about 
militarism in Japan, about Shantung, about Korea 
and Formosa, about Manchuria and Siberia. And 
though I do not expect any Japanese-hater to 
believe me, I wish to declare here, in justice to the 
Japanese, that they gave me the information I 
asked, even though to do so sometimes pained them. 

I saw and learned things creditable to Japan and 
things discreditable, just as in other lands one sees 
and learns things in both categories. I found the 
Japanese neither angels nor devils. They are human 
beings like the rest of us, having their virtues and 
their defects. 

I came away liking and respecting them as a 
people. This fact I proclaim with the fuU knowledge 
that those who do not like them will accept it, not 
as a sign of any merit in the Japanese, but as proof 
of my incompetence, or worse. 



266 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

"But you have not been to China," some of my 
friends say. "You would Hke the Chinese better 
than the Japanese." 

That may be true or it may not. I am incHned 
to beHeve that there is, on the surface, more natural 
sympathy and understanding between Americans 
and Chinamen than between Americans and Japan- 
ese. The Chinaman is more easily comprehensible 
to us. Also he is meek. We can talk down to 
him. He will do as we tell him to. He is not a 
contender — as the Japanese very definitely is — 
and is . therefore easier to get along with. As an 
individual he has many qualities to recoromend 
him, though neither patriotism nor cleanhness seems 
to be among them. 

If I ever go to China I shall hope and expect not 
to fall into the mental grooves which lead travellers 
in the Orient generally to feel that if they like a 
Chinaman they cannot like a Japanese, and vice 
versa. I hereby reserve the right to like both. 

China appears to be an amiable, flaccid, sleepy 
giant who has long allowed himself to be buUied, 
victimized, and robbed. Japan, on the other hand, 
is a small, well-knit, pugnacious individual, well 
able to look after himself, and profoundly engaged in 
doing so. Naturally the two do not get on well 
together, and equally naturally the impotent giant 
comes off the worse. One is, to that extent, sorry 
for him, but one can hardly respect him as one would 
were he to rise up and assert himself. One may, on 
the other hand, wish the httle Japanese less ob- 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 26? 

streperous, but one is bound to respect him for his 
prowess. Physically and materially he has earned 
for himself the undisputed leadership of the Far East. 
There remains, however, the question whether he 
is spiritually great enough to become, as well, a moral 
leader. In that question is bound up the future of 
the Orient. Some signs are hopeful, some are not. 
The answer is locked in the vaults of time to come. 

It is not surprising that the Japanese are proud 
of the leadership they have already attained. Being 
relatively new members of the hair-puUing, hob- 
nailed family we call the Family of Nations, and 
having rapidly become important members, they 
are inchned to harp more than necessary upon 
this importance, so novel and so gratifying to them. 
They like to talk about it. They delight in pro- 
claiming themselves a "first-class power." They 
rejoice exceedingly in their alliance with Great 
Britain, not because the alliance itself has any very 
real importance (in view of the attitude of Australia 
and Canada toward Japan, and of Britain's re- 
gard for American sentiment, it cannot have), but 
because of the flattering association. Japan likes 
to be seen walking with the big fellows. In this 
she reminds one somewhat of a youth in all the pride 
and self-consciousness of his first pair of "long 
pants," 

Now there is this to be remembered about a youth 
in his first "long pants " : he requires careful handling. 
If you treat him like a child, either patronizing 
or ignoring him, you will offend him mortally, and 



26B MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

not impossibly drive him to some toious action in 
assertion of his manhood. But if, on the other hand, 
you are misled by his appearance of maturity, 
and expect of him all that you would expect of a 
thoroughly ripened man, then you are very likely 
to find yourself disappointed. 

There is but one course to be pursued with a 
youth in this intermediate stage. He must be 
managed with tact, firmness, and patience. In 
dealing with the young, many adults fail to under- 
stand this, and in dealing with a nation in a cor- 
responding state of evolution, other nations are as a 
rule even stupider than adult individuals. 

Britain, wisest of all the world in international 
affairs, has not made this mistake in her relations 
with Japan. The alliance is one proof of it. The 
visit of the Crown Prince of Japan to England in 
the spring of 1921, is another. Nor was the tact 
of Britain in this situation ever better displayed than 
in King George's speech, when, toasting the Imperial 
guest, he said: 

"Because he is our friend we are not afraid for 
him to see our troubles. We know his sympathy 
is with us and that he will understand." 

Would that the United States might draw the 
simple lesson from these two short sentences spoken 
by England's king. Would that we might learn 
to take that amiable tone. Would that Americans 
might understand how instantly the Japanese — yes, 
and all other nations — respond to such approaches. 

The problem of maintaining friendly relations 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 269 

with this neighbour on the other side of the Pacific 
is not, in truth, nearly so difficult as many of our 
other problems. It has been rendered difficult 
chiefly by our own incredible bungling. 

Among men a bungler is oftentimes feared and dis- 
liked exactly as if he were malevolent, and among 
nations the situation is the same. No nation, how- 
ever strong, can afford to give offence unnecessarily 
to other great powers; and the United States can least 
of all afford to irritate needlessly those powers with 
which her front yard and her back yard are shared: 
namely, Britain and Japan. Yet we are constantly 
annoying these two nations without accomplishing 
any counterbalancing good purpose. 

Britain, feehng, as we do, the tie of consanguinity, 
and having, moreover, a shrewd eye to her own inter- 
est, forgives us, or at least appears to. But in the 
case of Japan we are dealing with a very different 
situation. There is no blood relationship to ease the 
strain; nor is there always in Tokyo the calm, phleg- 
matic, self-interested statesmanship of London. 
Tokyo is sometimes temperamental. 

If we continue to bungle we shall ultimately gain 
the lasting ill-will of Japan, and if we do that we shall 
almost certainly find ourselves looking out of our back 
window not merely at a frowning Nippon, but at a 
coalition between Japan, Russia, and Germany — a 
coaHtion into which we ourselves, by our attitude, 
shall have driven Japan. 

It is for us to decide whether we wish to encourage 
such an alliance. 



270 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

With Mr. Hughes in the State Department we 
have, it appears, good reason to be hopeful, but Mr. 
Hughes has not as yet had time to accompHsh much 
of an improvement in American-Japanese relations. 
If he does so he will be the first American statesman 
to have made headway in the matter since Roosevelt 
was in the White House and Elihu Root in the 
State Department; for not since their time has there 
been evident in our dealings with Japan a definite 
and understanding policy. The failure of our di- 
plomacy is all too plainly reflected in the steady 
diminution of the good feeling which then existed. 

Though he never visited Japan, Roosevelt, with 
his amazing understanding of people, managed to 
sense the Japanese perfectly. He knew their virtues 
and their failings. He realized precisely the state 
they had attained in their evolution from mediaeval- 
ism to modernity. , He knew their samurai loyalty 
and pride, their sensitiveness, their love of courtesy. 

"Speak softly and carry a big stick," he used to 
say. In those words is summed up a large part 
of his foreign pohcy. He knew when to send a bear- 
skin to the Emperor, and when to send a fleet. 

Even when he sent that fleet of sixteen battleships, 
the visit paid was one of courtesy. And courtesy, 
as I have tried to show, is never, never lost upon 
Japan. 



PART IV 




CHAPTER XXII 

The Missing Lunch — The Japanese Chauffeur — the Little 
Train — Japanese Railroads — The Railway Lunch — The 
Railway Teapot — Reflections on Some American Ways — 
Are the Japanese Honest? — A Story of Viscount Shibusawa 
— Travelling Customs — An Eavesdropping Episode 

T EITHER the box of lunch nor the automobile 
to take us to the station was ready, though 
both had been ordered the previous night. 
We waited until twenty minutes before train time; 
then made a dash for the station in a taxi which 
happened along providentially — something taxis 
seldom do in Tokyo. 

The drive took us several miles across the city. 
Through a picturesque and incoherent jumble of 
street traffic, over canals, past the huge concrete 
amphitheatre in which wrestling bouts are held, 
across a steel bridge spanning the Sumida River, 
through a maze of muddy streets lined with open- 
fronted shops partially protected from the hot sun 
by curtains of indigo cotton bearing advertisements 
in large white Chinese characters, we flew precari- 
ously, facing collisions half a dozen times yet magic- 
ally escaping them as one always does behind a 
Japanese chauffeur. It is said that the Japanese 
chauifeur is not, as a rule, a good mechanic. As 

273 



274 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

to that I cannot say, but I assure you he can drive. 
At an incredible speed he will whirl you through 
the dense slow-moving crowds of a street festival 
or around the hairpin curves of a muddy mountain 
pass with one wheel following the shppery margin 
of a precipice, but he will never hurt so much as a 
hair of your head, imless, perchance, it hurts your 
hair to stand on end. 

The Ryogoku Station, where we found our friends 
awaiting us, is a modest frame structure, terminus 
of an unimportant railway line serving the farming 
and fishing villages of the Boso Peninsula — ^which 
depends from the mainland in such a way as to form 
the barrier between Tokyo Bay and the Pacific. 

The train seemed to have been awaiting us. It 
started as soon as we had boarded it, and was pre- 
sently rocking along through open country at twenty- 
five or thirty miles an hour. There was something 
of solemn playfulness about that little train. The 
cars were no heavier than street cars and the locomo- 
tive would have made hard work of drawing a 
pair of Pullmans, yet in its present role it gave a 
pompous performance, hissing, whistHng, and snort- 
ing as importantly as if it had been the engine of a 
great express. The httle guards, too, joined gravely 
in the game, calling out the names of country 
stations as majestically as if each were a metro- 
pohs. And the very landscape took its place in the 
whimsy, for our toy train ran over it as over a flat 
rug patterned with little green rice fields. 

The Japanese Government, which so woefully 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 275 

mishandles its telephones and cables, does better 
with its railroads. They are fairly well run. Trains 
are almost invariably on time, and the cars are 
not uncomfortable, although the narrower gauge 
of the Japanese roads makes them necessarily 
smaller than our cars. 

The ordinary Japanese sleeping-car is divided 
into halves. One half is like an American Pull- 
man sleeper, very much scaled down in size, while 
the other half resembles a European wagon-lit in 
miniature, with a narrow aisle at one side and com- 
partments in which the berths are arranged trans- 
versely to the train. 

As in Europe, there are three classes of day coaches. 
Except where trains are overcrowded, as they often 
are, one may travel quite as comfortably second- 
class as first. Coaches of all three classes are like 
street cars with long seats running from end to end 
at either side. Usually the car is divided in the 
middle by a partition, the theory being that one 
end is for smokers; but in pratice the Japanese, 
who are inveterate users of tobacco, seem to smoke 
when and where they please while travelHng. 

Express trains carry dining cars which are like 
small reproductions of ours. Some of these diners 
serve Japanese-style meals, some European, and 
some both. 

Much thought has evidently been given to making 
travel easy for English-speaking people. Each 
car of every train carries a sign giving, in English, 
the train's destination; time-tables printed in.Eng- 



276 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

lish are easily obtained, railroad tickets are printed 
in both languages, and the name of each town is 
trebly set forth on railroad station signs, being 
displayed in English, in Chinese characters, and in 
kana. 

As in the United States, station porters wear red 
caps but they have the European trick of passing 
baggage in and out of the car windows, so that the 
doorways are not blocked with it when passengers 
wish to get on and off. Also at stations of any 
consequence there are boys wearing green caps, 
who peddle newspapers, tea, and lunches. 

The Japanese railway lunch is an institution as 
highly organized as the Enghsh railway lunch. 
On the platforms of all large stations you can pur- 
chase almost any sort of lunch you desire, neatly 
wrapped in paper napkins and packed in an im- 
maculate wooden box. On each box the date is 
stamped, so that the traveller may be sure that 
everything is fresh. You may get a box containing 
liberal portions of roast chicken and Kamakura 
ham, with salad and hard-boiled eggs and a dainty 
bamboo knife and fork; or if you wish a Hght repast, 
a box of assorted sandwiches, thin and moist as 
sandwiches should always be but so seldom are. 
Or, again, you may get a variety of Japanese dishes, 
similarly packed. 

On this trip I selected a box of that deHcacy 
known as tai-meshi, and was not sorry that my order 
for lunch had been overlooked at the hotel. Tai- 
meshi consists of a palatable combination of rice 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 277 

and shredded sea-bream cooked in a sauce containing 
sake which obHterates the fishy taste of the sea- 
bream. The box cost me the equivalent of seventeen 
cents, chop-sticks included. From the green-cap 
boy who sold it to me I also purchased, for five 
cents, an earthenware pot containing tea, and a small 
cup, and when I had drunk the tea I learned that 
I could have the pot refilled with hot water at 
practically any station, for a couple of cents more. 
Just as your English traveller leaves the railway 
lunch basket in the train when he is done with it, your 
Japanese traveller leaves the teapot and cup. 
Drinking the philosopher's beverage I found myseK 
wondering whether such a system would be suc- 
cessful in the United States. I concluded that it 
would not. Some of the lunch-baskets and teapots 
Would get back to their rightful owners, but many 
would disappear. There is a certain type of Ameri- 
can, and he is numerous, who has a constitutional 
aversion to conforming to a nice, orderly custom 
of this kind. He has too much — ^let us call it 
initiative — for that. If he thought the lunch- 
basket and teapot worth taking home he would 
take them home; nor would he be deterred by the 
mere fact that they were not his, having only been 
rented to him. His subconscious sense of the im- 
portance of his own "personality" would hft him 
over any little obstacle of that kind. Without 
thinking matters out he would feel that because 
he had used them they were his. What he had used 
no one else should use — even though its usefulness 



278 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

to Viim was past. WTierefore, if he thought the 
basket and the teapot not worth taking, he would 
stamp his "personahty" upon them. He might 
take the basket apart to see how it was made, or 
he might draw out his penknife and cut holes in it. 
Then he would consider what to do with the teapot. 
Finding that it fitted nicely in the pahn of his hand, 
and sensing by touch its brittleness, he would want 
to use it as a missile. If he prided himself on the 
accuracy of his pitching he would throw it at a 
telegraph pole, but if he felt quite certain that he 
could not hit a pole he would wait for a large rock 
pile or a factory wall, and would hurl it against 
that with all his might, to make the largest possible 
explosion. 

People often ask me whether the Japanese are 
honest. Doubt on this subject is, I beheve, largely 
due to the old story that Chinese tellers are em- 
ployed in Japanese banks — all Chinamen being 
trustworthy and aU Japanese the reverse. I know 
of no better example of the vitahty of a He than is 
afforded by the survival of this one. It is a triple 
lie. Japanese banks do not have Chinese tellers. 
The Japanese as a race are no more dishonest than 
other people. The leading bankers of Japan, many 
of whom I have met, are men of the highest character 
and the greatest erdightenment, and would be so 
recognized in any land. Nor is this merely my 
opinion. It is the opinion I have heard expressed 
by several of the greatest bankers and manufacturers 




Pretty Gen was between the shafts, the other girl was piilhng 
at a rope, and the grandmother was at the rear, pushing 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 279 

in the United States — ^men who have done business 
with Japanese bankers and who know them thor- 
oughly. 

It is true that trademarks and patented articles 
manufactured in other countries have been stolen by 
some Japanese manufacturers and merchants, and 
that this abominable practice is to some extent kept 
up even to-day. But conditions in this respect are 
improving as business morality grows. Nor should 
it be forgotten that the present standard of inter- 
national commercial ethics, which so strongly 
reprehends such thefts, is comparatively a new thing 
throughout the entire world. It must, however, be 
admitted that Japan is not, in this particular, fully 
abreast of the other great nations. 

As for the average of probity among the people 
at large I can say this — that if I were obliged to risk 
leaving a valuable possession in a public place, 
on the chance of its being found by an honest per- 
son and returned to me, I should prefer to take 
the risk in Japan, than in most other countries. 
Certainly, I should prefer to take it there than 
in the United States — unless I could specify certain 
rural sections of the United States, where I should 
feel that my chances were better than in the neigh- 
bourhood of New York. 

The Japanese are respecters of property, private 
and pubhc. One may visit the historic buildings of 
Japan without seeing a single evidence of vandahsm. 
I was immensely struck by this. It was so unlike 
home! More than once, over there, I thought of a 



280 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

visit I paid, some years ago, to Moiiticello, the beauti- 
ful old mansion built near Charlottesville, Virginia, 
by Thomas Jefferson, and of what the caretaker 
told me. All visitors, he said, had to be watched. 
Otherwise vines would be torn from the walls of the 
house, bricks chipped, and marble statuary broken. 
They had even found it necessary to build an iron 
fence around Jefferson's grave to protect the monu- 
ment from American patriots who would like to 
take home little pieces of it. 

The custom of visiting historic places and the 
graves of historic figures is much more common in 
Japan than in America. Many of Japan's most fa- 
mous monuments are entirely unprotected, but in- 
stead of knocking them to pieces to get souvenirs 
the pilgrim will burn a little incense before them, 
and perhaps leave his visiting card on the spirit 
of the departed. Or he may write a poem. 

Dr. John H. Finley has told me a story which well 
illustrates the delicate and reverential attitude of the 
Japanese in such matters. 

When Baron — ^now Viscount — Shibusawa came 
to the United States several years ago, a banquet was 
given in his honour in New York by the Japan 
Society, of which Doctor Finley was then president. 

At the banquet Doctor Finley remarked to the guest 
of honour that he heard he had sent an emissary 
with a wreath to be laid upon the grave of Townsend 
Harris, first American Minister to Japan, who is 
buried in Brooklyn. 

"No," said Baron Shibusawa, "that is not exactly 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 281 

what occurred. I did not send the wreath. I 
took it myself and laid it on the grave. And I 
wrote two poems in memory of Townsend Harris 
and hung them in the branches of a Japanese maple 
tree overhanging his resting-place." 

But let us get back to our little railroad train. 

The men among our Japanese fellow travellers 
were sitting on the seats with their feet on the floor, as 
we do, but the women and children had shpped off 
their clogs and were squatting in the seats with their 
backs to the aisle, looking out of the windows or 
dozing with their heads resting upon their hands, 
or against the window-frame. One elderly lady 
was lying at full length on the seat, asleep, with 
her bare feet resting on the cushions. 

The Japanese are much less fearful than we of the 
interest of fellow passengers, and indeed, so far as con- 
cerns strangers of their own race, they are justified in 
this, for Japanese travellers pay little or no attention 
to one another. In foreigners they are more inter- 
ested. A Japanese who can speak English wiU fre- 
quently start a conversation with the traveller from 
abroad, and will almost invariably endeavour to be 
helpful. Rustics stare at the stranger with a sort of 
dumb interest, just as American rustics might stare 
at a Japanese; and young Japanese louts sometimes 
snicker when they see a foreigner, and comment upon 
him, just as young American louts might do on seeing 
a Japanese passing by — especially if he was wearing 
his national costume. 



282 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

"Pipe the Jap," a New York street-corner loafer 
might exclaim; while similarly an ill-bred youth of 
Tokyo, Kobe or Yokohama might remark: '' Keto,'' 
which means "hairy foreigner." The term keto 
is not intended to be complimentary, yet no more 
real harm is meant by its user than would be meant 
by an American smart-aleck who should speak of 
"chinks," "kykes" or "micks." Such terms merely 
exemplify the instinctive hostility of small-minded 
men the world over, for all who are not exactly like 
themselves. 

Some Japanese country folk who sat opposite us on 
our journey to the Boso Peninsula were clearly much 
interested in us — ^particularly in the ladies of our 
party, and as so few foreigners understand the 
Japanese language, they felt safe in talking us over 
amongst themselves. 

"What a strange little thing to wear on one's 
head!" said the husband, to the wife referring to a 
neat little turban worn by one of our ladies. 

"Yes," said the wife, "and I don't see how she can 
walk in those shoes with their tall, thin little heels. 
Aren't they funny ! " 

These remarks and others revealing their interested 
speculations as to which women of our party were 
married to which men, were translated to us by the 
friend who had organized the excursion. Being a 
good deal of a wag, he let them talk about us until 
the subject seemed to be exhausted. Then he ad- 
dressed a casual question, in Japanese, to the hus- 
band across the way. I have seldom seen a man 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 283 

look more disconcerted than that one did just then. 
He answered the question, but that was the last 
word we heard him speak. Though an hour passed 
before he and his wife got off the train, and though 
they had until then talked volubly together, the 
complete silence which came over them was not 
broken by so much as a monosyllable until they 
reached the station platform. There, however, we 
saw that they had begun to talk again, and with 
gestures showing not a little agitation. I had a 
feeling that each was blaming the other for the whole 
affair. Relations between husband and wife are, 
in some respects at least, a good deal more aHke in 
all countries than is commonly supposed. 



CHAPTER XXIII 

Katsuura and the Basha — A Noble Coast — Scenes en a 
Country Road — The Fishers — A Temple and Tame Fish — 
We Arrive at an Inn — / See a Bath — / Take One — Bathing 
Customs — The Attentive Nesan — In the Tub 

A JOURNEY of about three and a half hours 
brought us to the seacoast town of Katsuura, 
^ the terminus of the little railway line. 
The industry of Katsuura is fishing, and there is a 
kind of dried fish put up there which has quite 
a reputation. Almost every town in Japan has 
some specialty of its own, whether an edible or 
something else — something for the traveller to 
purchase and take home as a souvenir. Many of 
the best Japanese colour-prints were orginally made 
for this purpose — souvenirs of cities and towns, 
celebrated inns, famous actors, and notorious cour- 
tesans. 

Leaving the train we got into a hasha — a primitive 
one-horse bus with tiny wheels — and took a highway 
leading south along the shore. The day was brilliant 
and our road, skirting the edge of the lofty coastal 
hills half way between their green serried peaks 
and the yellow beach on which the surf played be- 
low, was white and dusty in the hot sun. On level 
stretches and down-grades we rode in the basha, 

284 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 285 

but we always got out and walked up hills to spare 
the venerable horse. Nor will travellers who have 
ever followed such a system be surprised that, of the 
twenty miles we covered on our way to Kamogawa, 
fully fifteen seemed to be up-hill miles. 

This shore continually reminded me af other 
shores — Brittany, in the region of Dinard and Can- 
cale, and the cliffs between Sorrento and Amalfi. 
But here the contours were more tender. Many a 
beach I saw, with tiny houses strewn along the 
margin of the sand, fishing boats drawn up in rows, 
and swarthy men and women bustling about among 
the nets and baskets, which made me think of the 
Marina at Capri. Even the air was that of Capri 
in the springtime. But here there was no song. 

A succession of lofty promontories jutting ag- 
gressively toward the sea gave interest to the road. 
Sometimes they turned its course, forcing it to 
swing out around them; in other cases tunnels 
penetrated the barrier hills, and we would find 
ourselves trudging along beside the basha, through 
damp echoing darkness, with our eyes fixed on a 
distant point of light, marking the exit, ahead. 

It was a much-travelled road. We were contin- 
ually meeting other bashas creaking slowly through 
the white dust, or drawn up before inns and tea- 
houses where passengers were pausing for refresh- 
ment. During the entire afternoon we met not a 
single automobile, and when, after an hour or two, a 
Japanese lady, beautifully dressed and sheltered 
from the sun by a large parasol, flashed past in a 



286 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

shining ricksha propelled by two cooHes, she made a 
picture strangely sophisticated, elegantly exotic, 
against the background of that dusty country high- 
way so full of humble folk. 

All the women of this region were hard at work. 
Some were labouring beside their husbands in the 
mud and water of the paddy fields, others were 
occupied upon the beach, piling up kelp and carrying 
it back to huge wooden tubs in which it was being 
boiled to get the juice from which iodine is extracted, 
still others were transporting baskets of fresh 
shiny fish from the newly landed boats to the village 
markets, or were drawing heavy carts laden with 
fish-baskets from one village to another. For this 
coast is the greatest fishing district of all Japan. 

On the streets of every village we saw fish being 
handled — ^large, briUiant fish laid out in rows on 
straw mats, preparatory to shipment, huge tubs 
of smaller fish, and great baskets of silver sardines. 
Nor was our awareness of piscatorial activities due 
only to the organs of sight. Now and then a gust 
of information reached the olfactory organs disclosing 
with a frankness that was immistakable, the prox- 
imity of a pile of rotted herring, which is used to fer- 
tilize the fields. 

Winding down a hill through a grove of ancient 
trees, with the sea glistening between the trunks 
on one side of the way, we came upon a weathered 
temple, and, rounding it from the rear, found a tiny 
village clustered at its base, in as sweet a little cove 
as one could wish to see — ^low, brown houses nestling 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 287 

among rocks and gnarled pines, a crescent of yellow 
beach with fishing boats drawn up beyond the reach 
of the tide, and children playing among them looking 
like nude bronzes come to life. 

This place, known as Tai-no-ura — Sea-bream Coast 
— small and remote as it is, has a fame which extends 
throughout Japan. For it was the abiding place 
of the thirteenth-century fisherman-priest Nichiren, 
who, though he antedated Martin Luther by about 
two and a half centuries, is sometimes called the 
Martin Luther of Japanese Buddhism. The Nichi- 
ren sect is to this day powerful, having more than 
five thousand temples and a million and a half 
adherents. Its scriptures are known as the Hok- 
kekyo, and I find a certain quaint interest in the 
fact that, because this Avord suggests the call of the 
Japanese nightingale, the feathered songster is 
known by a name which means "scripture-reading 
bird." 

The old weathered temple, which we visited, is 
known as the Tanjo-Ji, or Nativity Temple, and is 
said to have been established in 1286, but to me the 
most appealing thing about this district is the re- 
spect which to this day is accorded Nichiren's 
prohibition against the catching of fish along this 
sacred shore. The fishermen of Tai-no-ura go far 
out before casting their nets, and this has been 
the case for so long that the fish have come to under- 
stand that they are safe inshore, and will rise to 
the surface if one knocks upon the gunwale of a 
boat. 



288 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

I should have Hked to hnger at this place, but 
the afternoon was waning and we had still half a 
dozen miles or more to go. 

Sunset was suspended like a rosy fluid in the air 
when our basha drove down the main street of 
Kamogawa and stopped before the door of the inn. 

To an American, accustomed to the casual recep- 
tion accorded hotel guests in his native land, the 
experience of arriving at a well-conducted Japanese 
inn is ahnost sensational. The wheels of our 
vehicle had hardly ceased to turn when a flock of 
servitors came running out to welcome and to 
aid us. A pair of coohes whisked our bags into the 
portico, and as we followed we were escorted by the 
gray-haired proprietress and a bevy of nesans, 
all of them beaming at us and bowing profoundly 
from the waist. 

While I sat on the doorstep removing my shoes, 
two coolies came from the rear of the building bear- 
ing between them a pole from which two huge 
buckets of hot water were suspended. Pushing 
back a sliding paper door they entered an adjoining 
room. A moment later I heard a great splashing, 
as of water being poured, and looking after them 
saw that they were emptying their buckets into a 
large stationary tub built of wood. Nor was I 
the only witness to the preparation of the bath. 
Two Japanese women and three children stood by, 
waiting to use it. And they were all ready to get in. 

There was something superbly matter-of-fact 
about this whole performance which gave me a 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 289 

sudden flash of understanding. All the explaining 
in the world could not have told me so much about 
the Japanese point of view on matters of this kind 
as came through witnessing this picture. 

Adam and Eve were not progenitors of these people 
nor was the apple a fruit indigenous to Japan. 

The other members of our party were preparing to 
bathe in the sea before dinner, but I desired a hot 
bath and had asked for it as soon as I arrived. While 
in my room preparing I found myself wondering 
whether I was about to have an experience in mixed 
bathing, and if so how well my philosophy would 
stand the strain. 

But the peculiar notions of foreigners concerning 
privacy in the bath were, it appeared, not unknown 
to the proprietress of the inn. When I descended 
the stairs arrayed in the short cotton kimono 
provided by the establishment, I was not shown to 
the large bathroom near the entrance, but was taken 
in tow by a little nesan, who indicated to me that 
I was to put on wooden clogs — a row of which stood 
by the door — and follow her across the street to the 
annex. 

The bath was ready. Entering the room with 
me the nesan slipped the door shut and in a business- 
like manner which could be interpreted in but one 
way, began looping back her sleeve-ends with cord. 

"She intends to scrub you!" shrieked all that was 
conventional within me. *'Put her out!" 

"But don't you like to be scrubbed.^" demanded 
the inner philosopher. 



290 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

'*Her being a woman makes me seK-conscious," 
I replied to my other self. 

"It shouldn't. Your being a man doesn't make 
her self-conscious. What was it we were saying a 
little while ago about false modesty.^" 

"As nearly as I can remember," replied Conven- 
tion, evasively, "we agreed that Americans are 
full of false modesty." 

Whereupon I turned to the little nesan and with a 
gesture in the direction of the door exclaimed, 
"Scat!" 

Understanding the meaning of the motion if not 
the word, she obediently scatted, closing the door 
behind her. She did not go far, however. Through 
the paper I could hear her whispering with another 
nesan in the corridor. I went to the door with the 
purpose of fastening it, but there was no catch 
with which to do so. This left me with a certain 
feeling of insecurity as I bathed. 

A well-ordered Japanese bathroom, such as this 
one was, has a false floor of wood with drains be- 
neath it, so that one may splatter about with the 
utmost abandon. One does one's actual washing 
outside the tub, rinsing off with warm water dipped 
in a pail from a covered tank at one end of the tub. 
Not until the cleansing process has been completed 
does one enter the water to soak and get warm. 
Bathtubs in hotels and prosperous homes are large, 
and the size of them makes the preparation of a bath 
a laborious business; for running hot water is a 
luxury as yet practically unknown in Japan, the 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 291 

water for a bath being heated either in the kitchen, 
or by means of a little charcoal stove attached 
to the outside of the tub. To heat the bath by 
the latter system, which is the one generally used, 
takes an hour or two; wherefore it is obviously 
impracticable to prepare a separate bath for each 
member of the household. In a private house one 
tub of water generally does for all. 

Foreigners newly arrived in Japan are unpleas- 
antly impressed by this system of bathing, and in a 
Japanese inn they generally make a great point of 
having first chance at the bath. 

Though I do not expect to convince the reader 
that what I say is so, I must bear testimony to the 
truth that it is the idea rather than the fact of the 
Japanese bath which is at first unpleasant. You 
must understand that the Japanese are physically 
the cleanest race of people in the world; that, as I 
have already said, they bathe fully before entering 
the tub; that the tubbing is less a part of the cleans- 
ing process than a means for getting warm; and finally 
that the water in a tub which has been used by 
several persons looks as fresh as when first drawn. 

I once asked a cosmopolitan Japanese whether 
he did not prefer our system of bathing. He replied 
that he did not. *'I don't think your way is quite 
so clean as ours," he explained. "Not unless you 
take two baths, one after the other, as I always 
do when I am in Europe or America. I wash in 
the first bath. Then I draw a fresh tub to rinse 
off in." 



292 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

Just as this gentleman prefers his native style 
of bathing I prefer mine; yet I should not object 
to succeeding him in the bath. Nor am I alone in 
Hking the deep spaciousness of the large-size Japan- 
ese bathtub. An American gentleman who was in 
Japan when I was is having a Japanese bathroom 
built into his house near New York. 

With the bath of the proletariat the system is 
the same, but the tub is smaller and less convenient. 
It consists of what is practically nothing more nor 
less than a large barrel with a small charcoal stove 
attached to one side. Often it stands out-of-doors. 

On emerging from the hot water I found myself 
without a towel. I went to the door, opened it 
sufficiently to put my head out through the aperture 
and summond the nesan who stood near by. 

"Towel," I said. 

She smiled and shook her head, uncomprehending. 

I opened the door a httle wider, thrust out one 
arm and made rubbing motions on it. 

" Hai! " she exclaimed, brightly, and went scamper- 
ing off. 

As it was chilly in the room I returned to the hot 
tub to wait. There I remained for some minutes. 
Then it occurred to me that, understanding my de- 
sire for privacy in the bath, the nesan might be 
waiting outside with my towel, so I got out again 
with the intention of looking into the hall. 

' Just as I emerged, however, the door opened and 
in she came. 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 293 

"Scat!" I cried. Whereupon she handed me two 
towels and fled. 

It was well that she did bring two, for the native 
towel consists of a strip of thin cotton cloth hardly 
larger than a table napkin. The Japanese do not 
pretend to dry themselves thoroughly with these 
towels, but, as I have elsewhere mentioned, wring 
them out in hot water and use them as a mop, after 
which they go out and let the air finish the work. 

I dried myself as best I could, slipped into the 
cotton kimono, and returned to the main building 
of the inn. 

In the corridor I encountered my friend the 
linguist. 

**I want to take a photograph of that bathtub," 
I told him. 

"It won't explain itself in a photograph," he 
returned, "unless there's somebody in it." 

I knew what he meant. An American or Euro- 
pean, accustomed to the style of bathtub that stands 
upon the floor, would naturally assume from a pic- 
ture of this one that it was similarly set. But that 
was not so. It extended perhaps two feet below 
the level of the floor; there was a step half-way 
down the inside to aid one in getting in or out; it 
was so deep that a short person standing in it would 
be immersed almost to the shoulders. 

"You get in it, then, will you.^" 

"You ought to have a Japanese." 

"But that's out of the question." 

"No, it isn't." 



294 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

Nor was it. By the time I got my kodak and 
put in a roll of film he had a subject for me. 

It was the httle nesan to whom I had said "scat!" 
Nor could a grande dame in an opera box have ex- 
hibited more aplomb than she did when I photo- 
graphed her. 




The middle-aged coolie hurriedly seated himself on the bank 

to pass us in review 



CHAPTER XXIV 

A Walk in a Kimono — Dinner at the Inn — Sweet Servitors 
— An Evening's Enchantment — The Disadvantages ofRamma 
— My Neighbours Retire — A Japanese Bed — Breakfast — 
''Bears Milk'' — The Village of Nabuto — An Island and a 
Cave — The Abelone Divers — A Sail with Fishermen 



E 



*'"J" ET'S take a walk before dinner," said the 
linguist when our photographic enterprise 
had been accomplished. 

"All right, m go and dress." 

"Come as you are." 

"After a hot bath I might take cold in this thin 
kimono." 

"No. That's a curious thing about hot baths in 
Japan. The reaction from them is much like that 
we get at home from cold ones." 

"But, dressed this way, won't we look queer .^" 
I surveyed the lower hem of my kimono which hung 
only a little below my knees. 

"It's the costume of the coimtry." 

"But it's awfully short on us. It seems to me we 
ought to put on underwear at least." 

"Nonsense. A man doesn't know what comfort 
is until he has strolled out in a kimono after a bath." 

Our costumes were identical. We looked equally 
absurd. I consented. 

295 



296 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

My one difficulty on that stroll was with my clogs. 
I could not walk as fast as my companion, nor did 
I dare to lift my feet from the ground lest the clogs 
should fall off. And yet I can see that if one is 
brought up on clogs there is much to be said in their 
favour. They are durable and cheap. They neither 
suffocate nor cramp the foot. 

Once I spoke to a Japanese friend of the merits 
of the clog, but though he admitted that his clog- 
wearing countrymen had no trouble with their feet, 
he thought clogs, on the whole, a bad thing. "The 
movement for good roads in Japan," he said, "started 
when people began to wear shoes. Those who wear 
clogs do not object to bad pavements, and we shall 
never get good ones until clogs are discarded by the 
majority." 

We had not walked a block before I perceived 
that my companion had not overstated the case 
for the kimono as a costume for a stroll on a balmy 
evening. It does not bind one anywhere, but leaves 
one's arms and legs delightfully free. Moreover 
the air penetrates to the body, and the feeling of it 
after a very hot bath is as refreshing as an alcohol 
rub. 

The streets were full of people many of them 
fishermen dressed much as we were. But though 
reason told me that in our kimonos we were less 
conspicuous than we should have been in our cus- 
tomary attire, I could not rid myself of the feeling 
that we were masqueraders, and that if people were 
to recognize us through the darkness for foreigners, 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 297 

we should have a crowd following us. Wherefore, 
though our promenade proved absolutely unevent- 
ful, I was upon the whole reheved when, after having 
gone the length of the main street and back, we re- 
entered the hotel. 

Our dinner that night was purely Japanese; the 
nesans brought the usual little foot-high lacquer 
tables laden with covered bowls of porcelain and 
lacquer; we sat upon silken cushions on the matting 
in the linguist's room and struggled bravely with 
our chop-sticks. 

The room was on the second floor. Through 
the open shoji we could look across a tiny garden 
into other rooms, open like ours to the soft evening 
air, and we could see the nesans gHding back and 
forth between these rooms and the kitchen, moving 
along the polished wooden floor of the gallery with 
their characteristic pigeon-toed shuflle. 

In an American hotel our little party would 
have been served by one waiter; here we were 
attended by three nesans, one of whom squatted on 
the matting beside the rice bucket, ready to help 
us when we held out our bowls for more (for we had 
rice with our soup, our fish, and our tea), while the 
other two brought things from the kitchen, below 
stairs. And no matter how many times they had 
been in the room before, they always dropped to 
their knees, on entering, and bent their foreheads 
nearly to the floor in respectful salutation, ere they 
served the new course. 

This courtesy, 30 natural to them, made me feel 



298 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

very, very far from home, for in it seemed to be 
crystallized the romantic charm of the antipodes. 
The whole environment, moreover, enhanced my 
feeling. The exquisite simplicity of om- room, 
and of the other rooms across the garden; the soft 
lights shining through the rice paper of shoji here 
and there; the silhouettes, so Japanese, which passed 
across them; the shimmering of the dark green 
leaves of small trees whose upper branches reached a 
little bit above the floor level; the tinkling note of a 
samisen played in some remote part of the building; 
the almond eyes and massed ebony hair of our gentle 
httle servitors, their butterfly costumes, the strange, 
soft rattle of their language, the curious unfamihar 
flavours of the viands; all these combined to make me 
feel as one transported into an enchantment, vivid 
and fantastic as a painting by Rackham or Dulac. 

And yet, fascinated as I was with all this magic 
loveliness, I felt a gentle melancholy. For the shoji 
at the rear of the room were pushed back like the 
others, and from the beach on which they opened 
there came to me through the darkness an insistent 
note of definite and almost terrible reahty : the mur- 
mur of that ocean, black, restless, turbulent, ominous, 
imimaginably vast, by which I was cut off from home. 

My own room was next to that of the linguist, 
but the room beyond mine was occupied by a 
Japanese couple. The rooms were divided by 
walls consisting of opaque paper screens, sHding 
in grooves, and even these frail partitions were in- 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 299 

complete, for, as in all Japanese houses, there were 
ramma, or grills, over the tops of the screens. The 
purpose of these ranuna is to give ventilation at 
night, when the building is solidly encased in wooden 
shutters; but though it is true that they do permit 
some air to circulate, it is equally true that they 
permit the circulation of sound and hght. Herein 
lies the foreigner's chief objection to the Japanese 
style of house — it is utterly without privacy. 

I endeavoured to be quiet as I made ready for 
bed, and I am sm'e my Japanese neighbours Hkewise 
tried, but their whisperings and the little rustling 
sounds they made as they moved about, enhanced 
rather than diminished my consciousness of their 
proximity. 

After I had put out my light my room continued 
for some time to be illuminated by the glow which 
came through the ramma on both sides. Presently 
the linguist's light went out, but that from the room 
of my other neighbours persisted, keeping me awake. 
This was the first time that I acutely missed chairs 
as an adjunct to Japanese life; if I had a chair I 
could hang a kimono over it to make a screen for my 
eyes. At last, however, I heard a little click, which 
was immediately followed by darkness. Then a sound 
of soft steps. Then a comfortable sigh. Then silence. 

It was my first night in a Japanese bed. The 
bed consisted of two thin floss-silk mattresses, laid 
one above the other on the matting, and partly 
covered with what seemed to be a towel. It was all 
very clean. The pillow was a cylinder of cotton 



300 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

about six inches in diameter, stuffed with some sub- 
stance as heavy and as crackling as pine needles, 
but odourless. I think the stuffing was of rice- 
husks. My nightgown was a cotton kimono like 
the one in which I had gone walking, and my coverlet 
was the usual bed-covering of Japan — a quilted 
satin robe, very long, with armholes and spacious 
sleeves: a cross between a comforter and a kimono. 
I did not use the sleeves, but pulled it over as one 
would if sleeping under an overcoat. 

In all but one respect it was a comfortable bed. 
The thing that troubled me was the hard round 
pillow. I moved it about; I tried to flatten it; 
I tried my hand under it, and over it, between it 
and my face. 

"I shall never be able to sleep on such a pillow!" 
I thought, irritably. And the next thing I knew it 
was morning and time to get up. 

This inn, being exceptionally well appointed, 
provided separate wash-rooms for men and women. 
We trooped down and bathed. Then we breakfasted. 
The breakfast was much like the dinner of the night 
before — ^rice, soup, fish, and tea. 

"If any one feels the need of coffee," said the 
linguist, "we may be able to get it, but the chances 
are it won't be very good. I've got a can of con- 
densed milk here, too." He held up the can. I 
noticed that it was called "Bear Brand" Milk, 
and that the label bore the picture of a bear. 

"Don't they have fresh milk at these inns.^" 
someone asked. 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 301 

"A few of them have it now," he repHed, "but 
it is only in the last few years that the people of this 
locality have learned to use milk at all." 

This reminded him of a story which he told us. 

On one of his walking trips he had stopped at an 
inn which boasted of having been patronized by an 
Imperial Prince. The friend who accompanied 
the linguist on that trip wanted coffee for breakfast, 
and the innkeeper managed to supply it. The 
linguist had a can of "Bear Brand " Milk in his haver- 
sack, but he did not wish to open it if milk could 
be produced at the inn. 

" Can you get me some milk.^ " he asked the nesan. 

"What kind of milkP" she inquired. 

Perceiving that she knew nothing of our custom 
of using milk in tea and coffee, he amused himself 
by replying: 

"Whale's milk." 

The nesan went downstairs and presently returned 
to say that there was no whale's milk to be had. 

"This inn has been patronized by an Imperial 
Prince," exclaimed the linguist, affecting astonish- 
ment, "yet you have no whale's milk.^^" 

The nesan admitted that such was the case. 

"Then," said he, "bring me elephant's milk. 
I'll try to make it do." 

Again she departed. 

"The proprietor is very sorry," she reported 
when she came back, "but he has just run out of 
elephant's milk." 

"Let me see the proprietor." 



302 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

When the latter appeared he was most apologetic. 
There had been an unprecedented demand for ele- 
phant's milk in the last few days, he explained, and 
his supply had been exhausted. He expected to 
have some more shortly, but the express was slow. 

"Very well," said the linguist, "I suppose I'll 
have to get along as best I can on bear's milk." 
Whereupon he opened the "Bear Brand" can and 
poured some of its contents into his coffee, while 
the hotel proprietor and the nesan looked on with 
bulging eyes. 

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself," I told 
him when he had finished the story. 

"The joke rebounded on me," he said. "After 
that I became a personage in the inn, and I had to 
tip correspondingly when I left — for according to 
the old custom of the country the size of the tip 
in a hotel is not in proportion to the service received, 
but in proportion to the rank of the tipper. And 
besides, the proprietor was very curious to know how 
they milked the bears. I had a devil of a time 
explaining that." 

After breakfast we set out on foot for the village 
of Nabuto, several miles farther along the shore. 
The road, winding around the rampart hills, was as 
beautiful as that we had travelled the day before, 
and as full of interesting figures and intimate glimp- 
ses of the life of these amiable industrious fisher- 
folk. 

Nabuto proved to be a tiny settlement at the 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 303 

tip of a rocky promontory, sheltered from direct 
assaults of the sea by a small, pimiacled island known 
as Niemon Island because it belongs, and has for 
eight centuries belonged, to a family of that name, 
residing there. 

An old sea-wife, looking like a figure from one of 
Winslow Homer's paintings, summoned the ferryman 
with a blast upon a conch shell, and a few minutes 
later we stepped from his skiff to a natural platform 
of granite at the island's edge. As we landed we 
were assimilated by a guide who began by indicating 
certain circular holes in the granite which, he de- 
clared, had been made by the hoofs of Yoritomo's 
horse. For legend has it that, when pursued, this 
mediaeval military hero used Niemon Island as a 
hiding place. Nor are the horse's hoof-prints the 
only evidence supporting this tale. One may see 
the cave in which the great Yoritomo concealed 
himself. 

Thither, by a rough, ascending path, the guide 
led us. It was a small, damp cave. If Yoritomo 
Uved there long he must have feared his enemies 
more than he feared rheumatism. Within was a 
small shrine dedicated to the ancient warrior, and 
hanging near it was a cord by which a bell could be 
rung to notify the spirit of the departed that callers 
had arrived. The guide signified to us that Yorito- 
mo's spirit would be profoundly gratified if we put 
a few coppers into the box in front of his shrine. 
Having contributed we were allowed to ring the bell. 

The ledge outside commanded a view of leagues 



304 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

and leagues of amethyst sea into which jutted a 
succession of green bastioned promontories. Below 
us, at the base of the cliiF, where the long swells 
were crashing in rhythmic succession, several small 
skiifs were tossing dangerously near the margin of 
the foam. These, said the guide, were the boats 
of abalone fishers — for the Niemon family, besides 
receiving tourists, and selling them trinkets, picture 
postcards, and flasks of Osaka whiskey, is in the 
business of canning abalone meat. I have attempted 
to eat abalone. Considering that it is a mollusc 
leading an absolutely sedentary life, it has astounding 
muscular development. A man who can masticate 
it ought to be able also to masticate the can in which 
it comes. 

Each skiff contained two men; an oarsman and a 
diver. The former would nurse his light craft 
close to where the seas were breaking on the island's 
rocky wall, while the latter, standing and swaying 
with the rise and fall of the boat, peered eagerly 
into the blue depths. Then, suddenly, with the 
swiftness of a thrown knife, the brown body would 
cut the water and disappear. One waited. One 
waited long enough to become a little anxious. 
But when it seemed that human lungs could not have 
held a breath for such a length of time, a head of wet 
black hair would pop out of the water and the glis- 
tening body of the diver would slip over the gunwale 
with the sinuous ease of a swimming seal. A mo- 
ment later he would be standing again in the bow 
of the boat, a figure beautifully poised, gazing with 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 305 

the rapt eyes of a seer into the swaying, streaky 
mysteries of the under-water world. 

Out here the fresh sea breeze wove hke a cool 
woof across the warp of rays from a hot noonday sun. 
Ashore there was no breeze. I was beginning to 
dread the baking dusty miles of highway leading 
back to Kamogawa. Then someone suggested that 
we sail there, and the linguist sent the guide to 
see about a boat. 

The vessel he secured was a two-masted fishing 
boat with a brave viking prow and long sleek lines. 
It was a piratical-looking craft and the appearance of 
the crew was even more so. They were like the 
Malay pirates in boys' books of adventure: almost 
naked, and tanned and weathered to a dark copper 
colour. Two of them wore short white shirts, open 
in front and terminating at the waist, but the others 
were innocent of such sophisticated haberdashery, 
the entire costume of each consisting of a pair of 
towels — one at the loins, the other wound around 
the head. 

All too soon they landed us upon the beach at the 
back of the hotel. 

"Now," said the linguist, as we waded up through 
the deep sand, "we'll pack our bags, get lunch, and 
be off." 

And precisely that we did. 

The whole staff of the inn assembled to see us 
depart. The proprietress gave us little presents. 
There was much bowing. Then the basha creaked 
away. 



CHAPTER XXV 

/ Take Gen's Photograph — The Pay of Fisher-Folk — Where 
All the World Works— We Help Gen Pull Her Cart— And 
Surprise Some Wayfarers — The Road Grows Long — Fairy 
Debutantes 

IN AN exceptionally picturesque fishing village a 
few miles on, I paused to take some photo- 
graphs. On a platform outside an old house 
overhanging the gray sea-wall at the margin of the 
beach, three women were unloading baskets of 
fish from a heavy handcart. One of them was fully 
sixty years of age, another I judged to be thirty, but 
the third was a girl not over twenty, a sturdy brown 
lass with eyes like those of a wild deer, and a ready 
smile which showed a set of glorious white teeth. 
She was as pretty a peasant girl as I had seen in 
Japan, wherefore through my bi-lingual friend, I 
asked permission to take her picture. 

From the amount of talking my friend did, and 
the laughter with which, on both sides, it was ac- 
companied, I judged that the request, as it reached 
her, was festooned with gallantries. At all event 
she readily consented to be photographed — as a 
pretty girl generally will — and when the shutter had 
snapped she asked that I send her a print. This I 
agreed to do if she would write her name and address 

306 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 307 

in my notebook. She did so in kana, which, being 
translated by my invaluable companion, revealed her 
name as Gen Tajima. 

Asked if all three of them were of the same family, 
the women replied that they were merely neighbours. 
They resided in the village of Amatsu-machi, several 
miles farther along the road that we were travelling, 
and it was their daily business to draw the cart from 
Amatsu-machi to this place, laden with baskets of 
fish to be salted and shipped. Their pay for this 
labour amounted to the equivalent of twenty-five 
cents a day in our money. 

**I suppose you are all of you married?" asked my 
friend. 

The old woman replied that she was; the other 
two laughed and declared that they were not. 
But they soon betrayed each other. "Don't you 
believe what she says!" they warned us gaily. 
"She is married. Fm the one who is looking for a 
match." Then, having had their little joke, each 
owned to a husband and children. Their husbands 
were fishermen, and earned, they said, two yen 
a day — about a dollar. 

"You work hard?" asked my friend. 

"Of course." 

"Why *of course'?" 

"Everybody down here works hard." 

"Even those who don't have to?" 

"Yes. Even people with a lot of money work 
hard. Here any one who did not work would be 
laughed at." 



308 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

They were typical Japanese women of the fisher 
class, happy, innocent, industrious. They interested 
me profoundly. But there was a long trip ahead of 
us and it was necessary to push on. We bade them 
farewell, got into the basha, and drove away. 

But we had not seen the last of them. When 
we had driven a quarter of a mile or so, they came 
running up behind us with their cart. Pretty 
Gen was between the shafts, the other girl was pulling 
at a rope tied to one side, and the grandmother was 
at the rear, pushing. They ran pigeon-toed, like 
Indians, and what with the commotion caused by 
their rope sandals and the wheels, left a cloud of 
dust behind them. 

Full of merriment they closed in upon us. One 
of them called to us in Japanese. 

*'What did she sayP" I asked. 

My friend translated: 

"She says that because we are strangers they will 
escort us." 

"Come on," I said, jumping out of the basha. 
"Let's help them pull the cart." 

He joined me at once. We took up our places, 
naturally, at either side of Gen. 

She was full of questions. Where were we from? 
How long did it take to come all the way from Amer- 
ica .^^ What was America like.^ Didn't the American 
people like the Japanese people P Her brother was a 
sailor. He had made a voyage to America and said 
it was a very fine place, and that everyone was rich. 
It wasn't like that in Japan. Here almost everyone 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 309 

was poor. It was hard to earn enough to Hve on, 
now that food cost so much. 

Finding that there were now too many willing 
hands at the cart, we discharged the grandmother 
and the other woman, placing them in our seats 
in the basha. 

" It is a pity you can't ride, too," my friend said to 
Gen, "but it is better for you to stay here and see 
that we don't steal the cart." 

To which the old woman leaning out of the back 
seat of the basha remarked that she thought us 
much more likely to steal the cart if Gen went with 
it. 

This caused much hilarity. Gen, I think, was a 
little embarrassed, but she enjoyed it aU the same. 

"As things are," she said, smiling and looking 
at the road, "I am well satisfied to walk." 

The chatter was so Hvely that I had a good deal 
of difi&culty in finding out aU that was being said; 
it was no small task for my companion to keep up 
his end of the conversation against all three of them, 
and at the same time translate for me. I began 
to find mvself left out. 

Moreover, I had not anticipated that we should 
attract so much attention. The mere fact that we 
were ahens made us conspicuous in this part of the 
country, and the sight of two foreign men helping 
a peasant girl pull a cart, while the girl's usual com- 
panions rode ahead in the comparative magnificence 
of a basha, caused people in the villages through 
which we passed not only to stare in amazement, 



310 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

but to call their friends to come and witness the 
unheard-of spectacle. 

I remember an old woman bent under a great 
load of straw which she was carrying on her back, 
who, when she glanced up and saw us, looked as 
if she were going to faU over, and I shall never 
forget the quizzical, puzzled, fixed gaze of a middle- 
aged coolie, with a load of wood on his back and a lit- 
tle pipe in his mouth, who, on sight of us, hurriedly 
seated himself on the bank at the roadside to pass 
us in review. He was a ^e type. I dropped my 
hold upon the shaft, imslung my kodak, and em- 
balmed his features on a film. 

"Come on back here!" called my companion. 
"Gen and I need you with our cart." 

Gen and I! . . . Our "cart, indeed! Who 
first thought of helping Gen with her cart, I should 
like to know! 

Without enthusiasm I returned and took hold 
of the shaft again. The cart was getting heavier. 
He and Gen weren't pulling as they should. They 
were too busy talking — that was the trouble with 
them! 

"Say, how far is it to this town where these people 
five?" I demanded of him. \ 

"I guess it's not very much farther," my friend 
interrupted his conversation with Gen to reply. 

"I should hope not! We've pulled this infernal 
cart about five miles already." 

"If you don't hke it," he answered, "why don't 
you get back in the basha.^" 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 311 

"How am I going to do that, when that old 
woman is in my place P" 

"Tell her you want to ride. Tell her to come 
back here and get on the job again." 

I looked up at her. It was quite out of the ques- 
tion to do such a thing. Much as I should have en- 
joyed my seat in the basha, she was enjoying it 
more. She and the younger woman were having 
a magnificent time, chattering, giggling, haihng 
every acquaintance they passed. And when other 
peasants who knew them gazed, astonished, they 
would burst into roars of mirth. All of which 
gave our progress more than ever the aspect of a 
circus parade in which, it began to seem to me, I 
figured as the clown. 

Left to my own thoughts I endeavoured to meet 
the situation philosophically. If I had been foolish 
to get myself into this cart-pulling adventiue my 
folly was of a kind common to my sex. Other men 
without number had made even greater fools of 
themselves. And, whereas in a httle while this in- 
cident would be ended, some men got into scrapes 
that lasted all their fives. It was pleasant to reflect 
on that. 

I began to see an allegory in the episode. In 
miniature it was like the story of a hasty marriage. 
. . . A man travelling the road of life in the 
comfortable basha of bachelorhood sees a pretty girl. 
Bright eyes, white teeth shown in a smile, and out 
he jumps. 

"Let me help you pull the cart!" he cries, without 



312 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

giving a thought to the future. So he takes hold, 
and as Hkely as not she eases off and lets him do most 
of the pulling. 

He wants companionship, but when he begins 
to look for it, what does he discover? He discovers 
that she doesn't know a word of his language, nor 
he a word of hers. He has sold his birthright for a 
mess of pulchritude. 

The road is long, the hills steep, the cart heavy. 
Presently appears another man and offers to help — 
some smart-aleck who can talk her kind of talk. 
And, of course, this linguistic ass begins prattling 
a lot of nonsense to her and turns her head. The 
more she listens to him the more inflated he becomes. 
That's what happens to some men if a pretty girl 
shows them a little attention! Does he stop for a 
minute to consider that his advantage is purely 
one of language? Not at all! The idiot thinks 
himself fascinating. 

So much for that. 

But now imagine another picture. Take those 
two men out of a situation in which one has mani- 
festly an unfair advantage, and place them on an 
equal footing in a totally different environment. 
Take them, let us say, to an American city, place 
them in a ballroom, bring in a lot of beautiful 
debutantes — ^hundreds of them, all iq pretty little 
evening gowns and satin slippers — start up the 
band. Then see what happens ! 

One of these men is a bookworm. He knows a 
lot about languages. He can speak Japanese. (You 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 313 

see I am being perfectly fair to him.) But the other, 
though he camiot speak Japanese, is — ^you under- 
stand this is purely an imaginary case — a hand- 
some, dashing, debonair fellow. While one has been 
learning Japanese the other has learned a few effec- 
tive steps. In the intricate mazes of the dance he 
seems to float godlike through the air. 

All right! Now I ask you, which one of these two 
men is going to be a success with all those debutantes? 
Is Japanese going to advance a man very far with 
an American debutante? In all fairness I say No! 
A debutante is too clever — too clever with her 
feet — to be misled by mere linguistic talent. True 
worth is the thing that counts with her. She looks 
for sohd merit in a man. In other words: What 
kind of a dancer is he? 

Is not the conclusion obvious? In the environ- 
ment I have pictured one of those two men will be 
left practically alone, while the other will find him- 
self constantly surrounded by a bevy of dainty, beau- 
tiful 

" Thisis Amatsu-machi," I heard my companion say. 

With a start I came back to Japan. 

"They're leaving us at the crossroads," said he. 

The basha drew up. The two women got out. 
They thanlied us prettily. Then amid many ''Sa- 
yonaras'' we drove off, while they stood and watched 
us, smiling and waving until we passed from their 
sight around a bend in the road. 

"They have lovely natures, these Japanese wo- 
men," the linguist presently remarked. 



314 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

"If you'll look over a lot of American debutantes," 
I replied, "you'll find that they are just about 
as " 

"You don't understand," he interrupted. "I'm 
not talking about mere prettiness — though you'd 
hardly say that girl Gen wasn't pretty. I'm talking 
about spiritual quality. Couldn't you tell, just by 
looking at her, that she was sweet right straight 
through?" 

"I guess she's all right," I answered in an off-hand 
tone. 

That did not half satisfy him. But though he 
kept at me for a long time, trying to make me say 
something more enthusiastic, I would not be coerced. 
He was too much puffed up as it was. 

I had another reason, too, for withholding from 
that pretty peasant girl the fullest praise. I must 
be faithful to the debutantes who, from far away, 
had come floating like a swarm of fairies to console 
me as I tugged Gen Tajima's lumbering cart along 
a dusty road upon the seacoast of Japan. 



CHAPTER XXVI 

The Handkerchief as a Travelling Bag — Bags and Bottles — 
Computing Time — The Mystic Animals of the Zodiac — 
Superstitions Regarding Them — Temple Fortune-Telling — 
An Ekisha — The Ema — Yuki Tells of a Wonderful Cure 



1 



"^HE national travelling bag of the Japanese 
is a large, strong handkerchief of silk or 
cotton, in which the articles carried on a 
journey are tied up. The elasticity of this container, 
which is called a furoshiki, is its great advantage. 
It is as large or as small as its contents require, and 
when it is empty you do not have to lug it about by 
hand, like an empty suitcase, but merely put it in 
your pocket. 

The trouble with our style of suitcases and bags is 
that they are heavy, bulky, and not adaptable. 
On one occasion they are overcrowded, on another 
we carry them half empty. My own bags remind 
me of the way I used to feel about wine bottles in 
the cheery days when one could afford to regard 
such things with a somewhat critical eye. I always 
felt that wine bottles were either too large or too 
small. Pints held a little too much for one, yet not 
enough for two; and quarts held rather more than 
was required by three, yet left four dissatisfied. 
Let us, however, drop this subject. De mortuis, . . . 

315 



316 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

I was often struck with the fact that though the 
Japanese woman seems to be more heavily dressed 
than the foreign woman, and though her coiffure 
is generally more elaborate, she carries so much 
less baggage when she travels. In our Yuki's 
furoshiki there was always room for my cigars, 
cigarettes, books, and kodak films. Her own things 
seemed to take no space at all. 

There are several reasons for this. A Japanese 
woman carries no hair-brush and wears her comb 
in her hair. Nor do the Japanese generally take 
nightclothes with them on a journey, for a clean 
cotton kimono, in which to sleep, is supplied by all 
Japanese hotels. More than once, when I saw Yuki 
starting off with us for a two- or three-days' trip 
with baggage consisting of a furoshiki tied to about 
the size of two ordinary novels, I thought of 
Johnnie Poe's famous "fifty-three pieces of bag- 
gage — a deck of cards and a tooth-brush." 

A favourite theme for the decoration of the furo- 
shiki embodies the signs of the Chinese zodiac, 
consisting of twelve animals. The Chinese calendar 
was adopted centuries ago by the Japanese, and 
they still take account of it, though they now gener- 
ally use our Gregorian calendar for computing time. 
But even so, their era is not the Christian Era, but 
dates from the beginning of the reign of Jimmu 
Tenno the Divine, whom the Japanese count as the 
first of their Imperial line, and who is said to have 
ascended the throne, 660 B.C. Thus our current 
year, 1921, is the year 2581 in Japan. Time is also 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 317 

measured arbitrarily by the reigns of emperors, the 
present year being Taisho 10, or the tenth year of 
the reign of the present Emperor. 

The Chinese zodiac, however, figures largely 
in Japanese superstition. , As there are twelve 
animals, the years are counted off in cycles of twelve; 
and the same animals are also associated with days 
and hours, in cycles of twelve. The attributes 
of the astrological animal governing the year of one's 
birth are supposed to attach to one. 

"My mother is a cow," a Japanese lady explained 
to me. "My husband is a snake and I am a rabbit." 

The lore of these animals is complicated. I have 
only a smattering of it, but what I know will suffice 
to show the general tendency of such superstition. 

It is considered good fortune to be born in the 
year of the horse because the horse is strong and 
energetic. 1920 was the year of the monkey. It 
is unlucky to marry in monkey year because the 
word saru, which means *' monkey," also means "to 
go back," the suggestion being that the bride will 
go back to her former home, or in other words be di- 
vorced. A woman born in the year of the rabbit 
will be prolific. (The lady who said, " I'm a rabbit," 
though very young, was the mother of four.) 

Similarly the animals, in their cycle, bring good 
luck or ill luck in connection with events occurring 
on certain days. It is unlucky to take to one's 
bed with a sickness on the day of the cow, because 
the cow is slow to get up. It is lucky to begin a 
journey on the day of the tiger, because the tiger. 



318 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

though he travels a thousand miles, always returns 
to the point from which he started; but for the 
same reason it is unlucky for a girl to marry on this 
day, because she, like the tiger, may return to the 
place from which she started: her father's house. 
And the day of the tiger is a bad one for funerals, 
because the tiger drags its prey with it, suggesting 
that another funeral will soon follow. The signi- 
ficance attaching to each animal according to the 
Japanese idea is not always apparent, without ex- 
planation, to the stranger. For instance, though 
I know it is considered lucky for a bride to cut her 
kimonos on the day of the rooster, I do not know 
why. Nor do I know why it is considered particu- 
larly lucky to have, in one family, three persons 
born under the same sign. 

Superstitition of all kinds plays a large part 
in the daily fife of the Japanese masses, and per- 
sons of intelligence often patronize fortune tellers, 
among whom are the Buddhist priests in certain 
temples. 

At Asakusa, the great popular temple of Tokyo, 
the fortune-telhng business is so brisk that two or 
three priests are busy at it all the time. The system 
is simple. The diviner shakes a lot of numbered 
sticks in a box, draws one out, and takes a paper 
from a Uttle drawer which bears a number corres- 
ponding with that on the stick. Your fortune is 
written on the paper, in multigraph. I paid two 
cents for mine, and when it was translated to me I 
felt that I had paid too much. 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 319 

Yuki, when she saw that I was disposed to take 
the matter Hghtly, seemed a Httle disappointed, 
and when later several of us decided to give the 
nepromancers one more fling, she herself escorted 
us to the establishment called Hokokudo, at number 
3 Chome, the Ginza, where father, son, and grandson 
successively have told fortunes for the past hundred 
and twenty years. Here we paid one yen each 
for our fortunes, but though the ekisha took more 
time to the job, examining our hands and faces, 
rattling his divining rods and making patterns with 
his Chinese wooden blocks, he didn't do much better 
than the priest had done for two cents. Yuki 
was impressed when he predicted a sea voyage for 
me, but the prophecy did not seem to me to con- 
stitute a remarkable example of divination. 

The visit to the ekisha was however, an experience. 
The httle house was picturesque, and it was interest- 
ing to see the stream of Japanese coming in, one 
after another, intent on learning what the future 
held in store for them. Also, while Yuki's fortune 
was being told I got a good photograph of the 
ekisha examining her hand through his magnifying 
glass. 

Another superstition is exampled in the ema, 
votive offerings in the form of little paintings on 
wood, which are put up at Shinto shrines by those 
in need of help of one kind or another. For almost 
any sort of affliction an ema of suitable design may 
be found, though the meaning of the grotesque design 
is seldom apparent to the foreigner. 



320 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

While in Japan I collected a number of these 
curious little objects and investigated their signi- 
ficance. Among them was one which Yuki recog- 
nized as an appeal for relief from eye trouble. 

"That very good ema," she told me. "I use 
one like that once when I have sore eyes." 

"Did it cure you, Yuki.»" 

"Yes — in two weeks. I put it up at shrine and 
I promise the god I no drink tea for two weeks. In 
two weeks my eyes all right again." 

"And you are sure the ema did it.^" 

"Yes, sir, I sure." 

"You didn't do anything else for your eyes.^" 

"No, it just like I say. I put up ema for god 
and not drink tea. Then I wait two weeks." 

"Did your eyes hurt you during the two weeks .^^" 

"Oh, yes. They hurt so much I have to wash 
them two three times a day with boric acid, while 
I wait for ema to make cure. But when end of two 
weeks comes they not sore any more. That ema 
work very good." 



CHAPTER XXVII 

Our Difficulties with the Language — The Questionable 
Humour of Broken Speech — "Do You Striking This Man for 
That?'^ — ''Companies, Scholars, and Other Households'' — 
Curious Correspondence — Japanese Puns — Strange Laughter 
— The Grotesque in Art — Japanese Colour-Prints — Famous 
Print Collections — Monet's Discovery of Prints at Zaandam 
— -Japanese Prints and French Impressionism 




■^HE complete dissimilarity between the Japan- 
ese language and our own, referred to in an 
earlier chapter, of course adds greatly to the 
difficulty of communication in all its various forms. 

In Tokyo and other cities I attended many lunch- 
eons and dinners organized for the purpose of dis- 
cussing relations between the United States and 
Japan, and promoting a friendly understanding be- 
tween the two nations, but though Japanese states- 
men and men of affairs spoke at these gatherings 
in fluent and even polished English, I never met 
with one American who was equipped to return 
the compliment in kind. The Americans, even 
those who had lived for years in Japan, always spoke 
in English, whereafter a Japanese interpreter who 
had taken notes on the speech would arise and render 
a translation. 

The linguistic chasm dividing the two peoples is 

321 



322 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

not, however, entirely a black abyss. If one wall 
is dark, the other catches the sun. Practically 
all Japanese students now study English in their 
schools, our language being considered next in im- 
portance to their own. And though, as I have said, 
many of them have perfectly mastered English 
despite the enormous difficulties it presents to them, 
there are many others whose English is imperfect, 
and whose "Japanned English," as some one has 
called it, achieves effects the unconscious grotesque- 
ness of which startles and fascinates Americans 
and Englishmen. 

To be honest, I have been in some doubt as to 
whether I should touch upon this theme or not; 
for it has always seemed to me that humour based 
upon the efforts of an individual to express himself 
in a language not his own was meretricious humour, 
inasmuch as it makes fun of an attempt to do a credit- 
able thing. It is a kind of humour which is en- 
joyed in some measure by the French and the British 
but which is relished infinitely more by us than by 
any other people in the world, as witness entertain- 
ments in our theatres, and stories in our magazines, 
depending for comedy upon dialect : German, French, 
Itahan, Irish, Jewish, Cockney, Negro, or even the 
several purely American dialects characteristic of var- 
ious parts of the country. 

This dubious taste of ours doubtless springs, to 
some extent at least, from the polyglot nature of 
our population; but whatever its origin it is a bad 
thing for us in one important respect. We find 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 323 

the English dialect of foreigners so funny that we 
ourselves fear to attempt foreign tongues, lest we 
make ourselves ridiculous. Wherefore we are the 
poorest linguists in the world. 

Even after the foregoing apology — for that, 
frankly, is what it is — I should still hesitate to 
present examples of "Japanned English" had I 
not discovered that Professor Basil Hall Chamberlain 
perhaps the greatest of modern authorities on Japan, 
a man whose writings reveal an impeccable nicety 
of taste, had already done so in his most valuable 
book, "Things Japanese," 

One of the examples given by Professor Chamber- 
lain is quoted from a work entitled: "The Practical 
Use of Conversation for Police Authorities," which 
assumes to teach the Japanese policeman how to 
converse in English. The following is an imaginary 
conversation intended to guide the officer in parley 
with a British bluejacket: 

What countryman are you? 

I am a sailor belonged to the Golden Eagle, the English man- 
of-war. 

Why do you strike this jinricksha-man? 

He told me impohtely. 

What does he told you impolitely? 

He insulted me saying loudly, "the Sailor the Sailor" when 
I am passing here. 

Do you striking this man for that? 

Yes. 

But do not strike him for it is forbidden. 

I strike liim no more. 

One curious aspect of the matter is that so much 
of this weird English creeps into print, appearing 



324 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

in guidebooks, advertisements, and on the labels of 
goods of various kinds manufactured in Japan. 

Thus in the barber shop of the ship, going over, 
I found a bottle containing a toilet preparation 
called "Fulay," the label of which bore the following 
legend: 

" Fulay'^is manufactures under chemical method and long 
years experience with pure and refmed materials. It is, there- 
fore, only the article in the circle as ladies and gents daily toilet. 

And on a jar of paste I found this label, which 
will be better understood if the tendency of the 
Japanese to confuse the letters I and r is kept in 
mind: 

This paste is of a pureness cleanliness and of a strong cohesion, 
so that it does not putrefy even when the paste grass is left open. 
Though written down on paper or the like immediately after 
pasting, the character is never spread. This paste has an especial 
fragrance therefore all of pasted things after using this are 
always kept from the frys and all sorts of bacteria, and prevents 
the infectious diseases. This paste is an indispensable one for 
the banks, companies, scholars and other households. Please 
notice for "Kuchi's Yamato-Nori" as there are similar things. 

The circular of one firm, advertising "a large assort- 
ment of ladies' blushes," might have been misinter- 
preted as having some scandalous suggestion, had it 
not gone on to discuss the ivory backs and high-grade 
bristles with which the "blushes" were equipped. 

Another circular was that of a butcher who catered 
to foreigners in Tokyo. After stating that his meats 
were sold at "a fixed plice" this worthy merchant 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 325 

mentioned the various kinds of beef he could supply. 
There were, "rosu beef, rampu beef, pig beef, soop 
beef, and beard beef" — which being interpreted sig- 
nified roast beef, rump beef, pork, soup meat and 
poultry — ^the word "beard" being intended for "bird." 
In the admirable hotel at Nara I saw the following 
notice posted in a corridor: 

REMARQUE 

Parents are requested kindly to send their children to the 
Hotel Garden for when weather is fine. When it is bad weather 
I will offer the children the small dining-room, except meal hours, 
as playing room for them, therefore please don't let them run 
round upstairs and downstairs at all. Please kindly have the 
children after dinner in a manner quiet and repose. 

Manager, Nara Hotel. 

From a friend, an official of a large company, I 
got a number of letters revealing the pecuHarities 
of "English as she is wrote" — at least as she is some- 
times wrote — in Japan. All these letters are authen- 
tic, having come to him in connection with his 
business. 

The first one, written by a clerk to the office 
manager, refers to an admirable Japanese custom 
which in itself is worthy of brief mention. 

Throughout Japan there is housecleaning twice 
a year under police supervision. Certain districts 
have certain days on which the cleaning must be 
done. The shoji are removed, the furniture is 
carried out, and the mats are taken up and beaten. 
The streets are full of activity and dust when this is 



326 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

going on, and there is a pile of rubbish in front of 
every residence. Meanwhile police officers pass 
up and down, wearing gauze masks over their noses 
and mouths to protect them from the dust, and at 
the end they inspect each house to see that the work 
has been properly done, after which they affix 
an official stamp over the door. 
Wherefore wrote the clerk to the office manager: 

Mr. S- 



Excuse my absent of this morning. All of my neighbourhood 
have got instruction to clean out nest. 

SiDA. 

A more serious dilemma is revealed in the follow- 
ing: 

To General Manager. 
Dear Sir, 

My wife gave birth this noon and as it happened nearly a 
month ahead than I expected, I much rather find myself in 
painful situation, having not yet prepared for this sudden 
ocurrence. 

Up to this day, unfortunate enough, I am destined most un- 
favourably for the monetary circumstance, and consequently 
have no saving against worldly concerns, I am forced to ask 
you for a loan of ^25.00 to get rid of the burden befallen on me 
by the birth. 

I know it is the meanest of all to ask one's help for monetary 
affair but as I am being unable to find any better way than to 
solicit you, I have at last come to a conclusion to trouble you 
but against my will. I deem it much more shamefull to ad- 
vertise my poor condition around my relatives or acquaintances 
no matter wheater it will be fruitfuU or fruitless. 

Yours obediently, 

Y . 



1 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 327 

The subjoined was received from one of the 
company's agents in another city: 

Dear Sir, 

We have the honour to thank you for your having bestowed 
us a Remington typewriter which has just arrived via railway 
express. We will treat her very kindly and she will give us her 
best service in return. Thus we can work to our mutual satisfac- 
tion and benefit. 
Thanking you for your kindness we beg to remain, 

Yours very truly, 

1 . 

The porter in a Japanese office not infrequently 
sleeps on the premises. But he must have the neces- 
sary equipment, as the following letter from an agent 
to a principal reveals: 

Dear Sir, 

In accordance to your esteemed conversation of other day for 
lodging the servant at this office, we consider we must provide 
to him the bed or sleeping tools. Please inform us that you 
could approve the expense to purchase this tool. 
Awaiting your esteemed reply we are, dear sir, 

Yours faithfully, 

T— A . 

The next letter is from a man who wished to estab- 
lish business relations with my friend's company: 

Dear Sir, 

I am a trader at Kokura city in Kyushu, always treating the 
various machines or steels and the architectural using goods. 

I have known of your great names at Tokyo. Therefore I 
want to open the connection with each other so affectionately. 
Accordingly I beg to see your company's inside scene so clearly, 
please send me the catalogue and plice-list of good samples of 
your company. 



328 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

I am a baby on our commercial society, because you will lead 
me to the machinery society I think. 
I trusted, 

Yours affectionately, 

I am, 

K M . 

One thing which sometimes makes these letters 
startling is the fact that they are couched in English 
which is perfectly correct save in one or two particu- 
lars. Thus the errors or strange usages pop out 
at one unexpectedly, adding an element of surprise, 
as in the case of a man who wrote to my friend 
applying for work : 

Dear Sir, 

I beg leave to inquire whether you can make use of my services 
as a salesman and correspondent in your firm. I have had con- 
siderable experiences as a apparatus, and can furnish references 
and insurance against risk. 
Awaiting your reply, I am 

Yours respectfully, 

K S . 

I have often been asked whether the Japanese 
possess the gift of humour. 

They do — ^though humour does not occupy a 
place so important in their daily life as it does in ours. 

A Hght touch in conversation is uncommon with 
them, and those who have it do not generally exhibit 
it except to their intimates. Yet they are great 
punsters, and some of their puns are very clever. 
A case in point is the slang term narikin which they 
have recently adopted to describe the flashy new- 
rich type which has come into being since the war. 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 329 

To understand the derivation of this word, and 
its witty connotation, you must know that in their 
game of chess, called shogi, a humble pawn advanced 
to the adversary's third row is, by a process re- 
sembling queening, converted into a powerful, 
free-moving piece called kin. The word nari means 
**to become"; hence nari-kin means literally "to 
become kin' — which gives us, when applied to a 
flamboyant profiteer, a droll picture of a poor little 
pawn suddenly exalted to power and magnificence. 
The pun, which adds greatly to the value of this 
term, comes with the word kin. Kin is not only a 
chessman; it also means "gold." Which naturally 
contributes further piquancy in the appUcation 
to a nouveau riche. 

Moreover, through a play on the word narikin 
there has been evolved a second slang term: narihin 
— hin meaning "poor" — "to become poor." And 
alas, this term as well as the other is useful in Japan 
to-day. War speculation has made some fortunes, 
but it has wiped out others. 

My friend 0- — , a truly lovable fellow, once 
spent the better part of an afternoon explaining a 
lot of Japanese puns to me, and I was hardly more 
pleased by the jests themselves than by my friend's 
infectious httle chuckles over them. At parting 
we made an engagement for the evening, but about 

dinner time returned to say that he could not 

spend the evening with me. 

"I have just heard that my best friend died 
last night," be said, "It is very unexpected. I 



330 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

must go to his house." So speaking he emitted 
what appeared to me to be precisely the same httle 
chuckle he had uttered over the puns. 

The suppression of one's feehng is a primary 
canon of Japanese etiquette. To show imhappiness 
is to make others unhappy; wherefore, when one 
suffers, it is good form to laugh or smile. The 
foreigner who comprehends this doctrine must, if 
he be a man of any dehcacy of feehng, respect it. 
But if he does not grasp the miderlying principle 
he is likely to misjudge the Japanese and consider 
their laughter, in some circumstances, hard-hearted, 
apologetic, or inane. 

/ The supreme proof of Japanese humour is to be 
found in the grotesqueries and whimsicahties of 
Japanese Art. You see it revealed everywhere — 
in the shape of a gnarled, stunted pine, carefully 
trained to a pleasing deformity; in the images of 
cats left in various parts of Japan by Hidari Jingoro, 
the great left-handed wood-carver of the sixteenth 
century; in the famous trio of monkeys adorning 
the stable of the leyasu Shrine at Nikko — those 
which neither hear, see, nor speak evil; in a thousand 
earthenware figures of ragged, pot-bellied Hotel, 
one of the Seven Gods of Luck, sitting, gross and 
contented in a small boat, waiting for some one to 
bring his abdominal belt; in the countless representa- 
tions of the Buddhist god Daruma, that delightful 
egg-shaped comedian who wiU run out his tongue 
and his eyes for you, or, if not that, mil refuse to 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 3S1 

stay down when you roll him over; in figurines with- 1 
out number, of ivory or wood; in sword-guards \ 
embellished with fantastic conceits; in those carved | 
ivory buttons called netsuke, treasured by collectors; 
and perhaps most often in Japanese colour-prints. 

The hundred years between 1730 and 1830 was 
the golden age of wood-engraving in Japan. 

During the lifetime of this art it was regarded 
as distinctly plebeian. Many of the fine prints 
were made to be used as advertisements or souvenirs. 
Some, it is true, were issued in limited editions, and 
these cost more than the commoner ones, but gen- 
erally they were sold for a few cents. 

Unfortunately, before the art-lovers of Japan 
perceived that the finest of these prints were master- 
pieces representing wood-engraving at its highest 
perfection, the best prints had got out of Japan 
and gone to Paris, London, Boston, New York, 
Chicago, and other foreign cities, whence the Japan- 
ese have lately been buying them back at enormous 
prices. 

From a friend of mine in Tokyo, himself the owner 
of a very valuable collection, I learned that the 
collection of 7,500 prints assembled by M. Vever, 
of Paris, has long been considered by connoisseurs 
the finest in the world. This collection was recently 
purchased intact by Mr. Kojiro Matsukata, of 
Kobe, president of the Kawasaki shipbuilding firm. 
It is said that Mr. Matsukata paid half a million 
dollars for it. My Tokyo friend tells me that the 
collection belonging to Messrs. WilHam S., and 



332 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

John T. Spalding, of Boston, is probably next in 
importance to the Matsukata collection, and that 
it is difficult to say whether the Boston Museum 
collection or the British Museum collection takes 
third place. For primitive prints, the Clarence 
Buckingham collection, housed in the Chicago Art 
Institute, is also very important. 

How does it happen that it was in Europe that 
Japanese prints first came to be highly appreciated 
as works of art.^^ 

Octave Mirbeau, in his delightful book of automo- 
bihng adventures, "La 628-E8" (which, I believe, has 
never been brought out in Enghsh) tells the story. 

The great impressionist, Claude Monet, went to 
Holland to paint. Some groceries sent home to 
him from a httle shop were wrapped in a Japanese 
print — the first one Monet had ever seen. 

"You can imagine," writes Mirbeau, "his emotion 
before that marvellous art. . . . His astonish- 
ment and joy were such that he could not speak, 
but could only give vent to cries of delight. 

"And it was in Zaandam that this miracle came 
to pass — Zaandam with its canals, its boats at the 
quay unloading cargoes of Norwegian wood, its 
huddled flotillas of barks, its little streets of water, 
its tiny red cabins, its green houses — ^Zaandam, 
the most Japanese spot in all the Dutch land- 
scape. ... 

" Monet ran to the shop whence came his package 
— a vague Httle grocery shop where the fat fingers 
of a fat man were tying up (without being paralyzed 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 333 

by the deed!) two cents' worth of pepper and ten 
cents' worth of coffee, in paper bearing these glorious 
images brought from the Far East along with 
groceries in the bottom of a ship's hold. 

"Although he was not rich at that time, Monet 
was resolved to buy all of these masterpieces that 
the grocery contained. He saw a pile of them on 
the counter. His heart bounded. The grocer was 
waiting upon an old lady. He was about to wrap 
something up. Monet saw him reach for one of the 
prints. 

"*No, no!' he cried. T want to buy that! I 
want to buy all those — all those!' 

"The grocer was a good man. He believed 
that he was deahng with some one who was a little 
touched. Anyway the coloured papers had cost 
him nothing. They were thrown in with the goods. 
Like some one who gives a toy to a crying child to 
appease it, he gave the pile of prints to Monet, 
smilingly and a bit mockingly. 

"*Take them, take them,' he said. 'You can 
have them. They aren't worth anything. They 
aren't sohd enough. I prefer regular wrapping- 
paper.'" 

So the grocer enveloped the old lady's cheese in a 
piece of yellow paper, and Monet went home and 
spent the rest of the day in adoration of his new- 
found treasures. The names of the great Japanese 
wood-engravers were of course unknown in Europe 
then, but Monet learned later that some of these 
prints were by Hokusai, Utamaro, and Korin. 



334 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

"This," continues Mirbeau, "was the beginning 
of a celebrated collection, but much more important, 
it was the beginning of such an evolution in French 
painting that the anecdote has, besides its own 
savour, a veritable historic value. For it is a story 
which cannot be overlooked by those who seriously 
study the important movement in art which is called 
Impressionism." 



CHAPTER XXVIII 

Living in a Japanese House — The Priceless Yuki — The 
Servants in the House — The Red Carpet — Our Trunks 
Depart — Tokyo's Night-time Sounds — Tipping and Noshi 
— The Etiquette of Farewells — Sayonara 

MY LAST days in Japan were my best days, 
for I spent them in a Japanese home, stand- 
ing amid its own lovely gardens in Mita, 
a residential district some twenty minutes by 
motor from the central part of Tokyo. 

Through the open shoji of my bedroom I could 
look out in the mornings to where, beyond the velvet 
lawns, the flowers and the treetops, the inverted 
fan of Fuji's cone was often to be seen floating 
white and spectral in the sky, seventy miles away. 

After my bath in a majestic family tub I would 
breakfast in my room, wearing a kimono, recently 
acquired, and feeling very Japanese. 

While I was dressing, Yuki sometimes entered, 
but I had by this time become accustomed to her 
matutinal invasions and no longer found them 
embarrassing. She was so entirely practical, so 
useful. She knew where everything was. She 
would go to a curious httle cupboard, which was 
built into the wall and had sliding doors of lacquer 

335 



336 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

and silk, and get me a shirt, or would retrieve 
from their place of concealment a missing pair 
of trousers, and bring them to me neatly folded 
in one of those flat, shallow baskets which, with 
the Japanese^ seem to take the place of bureau 
drawers. 

Thus, besides being my daughter's duenna and 
my wife's maid, she was in effect, my valet. Nor 
did her usefulness by any means end there. She was 
our interpreter, dragoman, purchasing-agent; she was 
our steward, major domo, seneschal; nay, she was our 
Prime Minister. 

The house had a large staff, and all the servants 
made us feel that they were our servants, and that 
they were glad to have us there. With the excep- 
tion of a butler, an Enghsh-speaking Japanese 
temporarily added to the estabKshment on our ac- 
count, all wore the native dress; and there were 
among them two men so fine of feature, so dignified 
of bearing, so elegant in their silks, that we took 
them, at first, for members of the family. One of 
them was a white-bearded old gentleman who would 
have made a desirable grandfather for anybody. 
If he had duties other than to decorate the hall with 
his presence I never discovered what they were. 
The other, a young man, was clerk of the house- 
hold, and enjoyed the distinction of being Saki's 
husband. 

Saki was the housekeeper, young and pretty. 
She and her husband hved in a cottage near by, 
and their home was extensively equipped with 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 337 

musical instruments, Saki being proficient on the 
samisen and koto, and also on an American melodeon 
which was one of her chief treasures. She was all 
smiles and sweetness — a most obhging person. 
Indeed it was she who pretended to be asleep in a 
Japanese bed, in order that I might make the 
photograph which is one of the illustrations in this 
book. 

Four or five cooHes, excellent fellows, wearing 
blue cotton coats with the insignia of our host's 
family upon the backs of them, worked about 
the house and grounds; and several Httle maids were 
continually trotting through the corridors, with 
that pigeon-toed shuffle in which one comes, when 
one is used to it, actually to see a curious pretti- 
ness. 

Sometimes we felt that the servants were showing 
us too much consideration. We dined out a great 
deal and were often late in getting home ("Home" 
was the term we found ourselves using there), yet 
however advanced the hour, the chauffeur would 
sound his horn on entering the gate, whereupon 
Hghts would flash on beneath the porte-cochere, 
the shoji at the entrance of the house would sHde 
open, and three or four domestics would come out, 
dragging a wide strip of red velvet carpet, over 
which we would walk magnificently up the two 
steps leading to the hall. But though I urged 
them to omit this regal detail, because two or three 
men had to sit up to handle the heavy carpet, and 
also because the production of it made me feel like 



338 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

a bogus prince, I could never induce them to do 
so. Always, regardless of the hour, a little group 
of servants appeared at the door when we came 
home. 

Even on the night when, under the ministrations 
of the all-wise and all-powerful head porter of the 
Imperial Hotel, our trunks were spirited away, to 
be taken to Yokohama and placed aboard the 
Tenyo Maru, even then we found it difficult to reahze 
that our last night in Japan had come. 

The realization did not strike me with full force 
until I went to bed. 

I was not sleepy. I lay there, thinking. And 
the background of my thoughts was woven out of 
sounds wafted through the open shoji on the sum- 
mer wind: the nocturnal sounds of the Tokyo 
streets. 

I recalled how, on my first night in Tokyo, I had 
listened to these sounds and wondered what they 
signified. 

Now they explained themselves to me, as to a 
Japanese. 

A distant jingling, like that of sleigh-bells, in- 
formed me that a newsboy was running with late 
papers. A plaintive musical phrase suggestive 
of Debussy, bursting out suddenly and stopping 
with starthng abruptness, told me that the Chinese 
macaroni man was abroad with his lantern-trimmed 
cart and his Httle brass horn. At last I heard a 
xylophone-hke note, resembhng somewhat the sound 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 339 

of a New York policeman's club tapping the side- 
walk. It was repeated several times; then there 
would come a silence; then the sound again, a little 
nearer. It was the night watchman on his rounds, 
guarding the neighbourhood not against thieves, 
but against ^e, "the Flower of Tokyo." In my 
mind's eye I could see him hurrying along, knocking 
his two sticks together now and then, to spread 
the news that all was well. 

Then it was that I reflected: "To-morrow night 
I shall not hear these sounds. In their place I shall 
hear the creaking of the ship, the roar of the wind, 
the hiss of the sea. Possibly I shall never again 
hear the music of the Tokyo streets. 

My heart was sad as I went to sleep. 

Fortunately for our peace of mind, we had learned 
through the experience of American friends, visitors 
in another Japanese home, how not to tip these well- 
bred domestics — or rather, how not to try to tip 
them. On leaving the house in which they had been 
guests, these friends had offered money to the 
servants, only to have it politely but positively 
refused. 

Yuki cleared the matter up for us. 

"They should put noshi with money," she ex- 
pledned in response to our questions. "That make 
it all right to take. It mean a present." 

Without having previously known noshi by name, 
we knew immediately what she meant, for we had 
received during our stay in Japan enough presents 



340 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

to fill a large trunk, and each had been accompanied 
by a little piece of coloured paper folded in a certain 
way, signifying a gift. 

In the old days these coloured papers always 
contained small pieces of dried awabi — abelone — 
but with the years the dried awabi began to be 
omitted, and the Httle folded papers by themselves 
came to be considered adequate. 

Fortified with this knowledge I went, on the day 
before our departure, to the Ginza, where I bought 
envelopes on which the noshi design was printed. 
Money placed in these envelopes was graciously 
iaccepted by all the servants. Tips they would not 
have received. But these were not tips. They 
were gifts from friend to friend, at parting. 

The code of Japamese courtesy is very exact and 
very exacting in the matter of farewells to the 
departing guest. Callers are invariably escorted 
to the door by the host, such members of his family 
as have been present, and a servant or two, all of 
whom stand in the portal bowing as the visitor drives 
away. 

A house-guest is despatched with even greater 
ceremony. The entire personnel of the estabHsh- 
ment will gather at the door to speed him on his way 
with profound bows and cries of "Sayonara!" 
Members of the family, often the entire family, 
accompany him to the station, where appear other 
friends who have carefully inquired in advance 
as to the time of departure. The traveller is escorted 



MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 341 

to his car, and his friends remain upon the platform 
imtil the train leaves, when the bowing and "Say- 
onaras" are repeated. 

Tokyo people often go to Yokohama with friends 
who are saihng from Japan, accompanying them to 
the ship, and remaining on the dock until the vessel 
moves into the bay. How Tokyo men-of-aifairs 
can manage to go upon these time-consuming seeing- 
off parties is one of the great mysteries of Mysterious 
Japan, for such an excursion takes up the greater 
part of a day. 

To the American, accustomed in his friendships 
to take so much for granted, a Japanese farewell 
affords a new sensation, and one which can hardly 
fail to touch the heart. 

Departing passengers are given coils of paper 
ribbon confetti, to throw to their friends ashore, 
so that each may hold an end until the wall of steel 
parts from the wall of stone, and the paper strand 
strains and breaks. There is something poignant 
and poetic in that breaking, symbolizing the vastness 
of the world, the littleness of men and ships, the 
fragiUty of human contacts. 

The last face I recognized, back there across the 
water, in Japan, was Yuki's. She was standing on 
the dock with the end of a broken paper ribbon 
in her hand. The other end trailed down into the 
water. She was weeping bitterly. 

Wishing to be sure that my wife and daughter had 
not failed to discover her in the crowd, I turned to 
them. But I did not have to point her out. Their 



342 MYSTERIOUS JAPAN 

faces told me that they saw her. They too were 
weeping. 

So it is with women. They weep. As for a man, 
he merely waves his hat. I waved mine. 

"Sayonaral" 

I tmned away. There were things I had to see 
to in my cabin. Besides, the wind on deck was 
freshening. It hurt my eyes. 

THE END 



INDEX 



INDEX 



Abalone, diving for, 304 
Actresses, increase of, 96 
Architecture, democracy in, 40 
Architecture and sculpture, 

horrors in, 27 
Art, grotesqueries and whim- 
sicalities, 330 
Athletic sports, popularity of, 
103 

Back-end-formost methods and 

customs, 48 
Bathing customs, 52, 65, 289 
Beauty, artistic conceptions, 163 
Beds, how arranged, 299 
Bill of faire, luncheon, 127 
Boasting, a cardinal sin, 173 
Brides, outfitted for life, 36 
Burglars, feared next to fire and 
earthquake^ 42; what to do 
when visited by, 45 
Bushido, doctrine of, 76 
Business methods, placidity in, 

228 
Butokukai — Association for In- 
culcation of MilitEiry Virtues, 
195 

Calendar, Chinese, adopted by 

Japanese, 316 
California, Japanese issue in, 

244 
Calligraphy, a fine art, 55 



Chafing-dish, cooking in, 149 
Cherry Dance of Kyoto, 144 
Children, in profusion, 23 
China, American engineer among 

brigands in, 10; compeired with 

Japan, 266 
Chinnung, Emperor, discoverer 

of tea, 69 
Chop-sticks, lesson in use of, 120 
Class, the distinctions of, 140 
Colonization, efforts in, 233 
Concubinage, stUl practised, 85 
Cooking, chafing-dish, 149 
Costume, regulated by calendar, 

33 
Courtesans, segregated, 154 
Courtesy, the code of, in making 

farewells, 340 
Crest, family, as used on 

kimono, 34 
Customs changed to fit Western 

ideas, 174 

Dancing girls, or maiko, 119, 

135, 137, 141 
Daruma, mythological creator 

of tea, 69 
Divorce customs, 85 
Dress of women, uniformity of, 

31 ; cost of, 35 

Earthquakes, influence of, in 
building construction, 38, 42; 



345 



346 



INDEX 



frequency and extent, 39; best 
course to pursue during, 43 
Efficiency and non-efficiency of 

the people, 235 
Elder Statesmen, the, 185 
Eliot, Sir Charles, on under- 
standing Japan, 75 
Ema, efficacy of an, 320 
English as she is wrote, 323 
Eri, neck piece worn with kimono, 

34 
European dress not popular 
with women, 31, 37 

Fashions, little variation in, 36 
Feudal Era, the, 70 
Films, kissing scenes cut, 98 
Finley, Dr. John H., on reveren- 
tial attitude of the Japanese, 
280 
Flower Arrangement, the study 
of, 66; origin of, 68; in con- 
nection with display of paint- 
ings, 72 
Folk d£mces by maiko, 137 
Foods and delicacies, 129 
Foreign customs adopted, 174 
Fortune tellers, well patronized, 

318 
Fujiyama, as seen from the sea, 
13; the "Honourable Moun. 
tain," 14 

Gardens, history tmd theory, 
167, 177 

Gardens, diminutive, 21 

Geisha, the best dressers, 37; 
at a luncheon, 116; various 
grades in, 119; no rhythm in 



their dancing, 132; what they 
really are, 132; in Japanese 
romances, 146; cost of enter- 
tainment, 151 
Geisha, male, or comedian, 156 
Great Britain's attitude toward 
Japan, 268. 

Haori, how worn, 35 

Hara-Kiri, privileges associated 
with, 192 

Hearn, Lafcadio, on the Japa- 
nese language, 56; on Japanese 
women, 75, 82; on the Tea 
Ceremony, 81; 

Hiratsuka, Mrs. Raicho, efforts 
to improve marriage laws, 84 

Honesty, Japanese and Chinese, 
278 

Hospitality, New York and 
Japan compared, 258 

House cleaning, under police 
supervision, 325 

Humour, extent of native, 328 

Imperial Bureau of Poems, 
duties of, 165 

Inouye, Jakichi, attributes bear- 
ing of Japanese ladies to study 
of Tea Ceremony, 81 

International Affairs ignored by 
Americans, 242 

Intoxication, prevalence of, 123 

Italy, compared to Japan, 163 

Japanese- American relations, 
letter from President Roose- 
velt to Baron Kaneko, 223 
Jesuits, expulsion of, 201 
Jiu-jutsu, in wrestling, 112; 



INDEX 



347 



taught to samurai, 192; renas- 
cence of, 193 
Jiudo, development of, 193 
Johnson, Senator Hiram, agita- 
tor on Japanese question, 
256 

Kakemono, method of hanging 
the, 72 

Kamogawa, visit to, 288 

Kaneko, Viscount Kentaro, pre- 
paring history of Meiji Era 
29; interviews with, 212; visits 
at Roosevelt's home, 213; 
Roosevelt's letters to, 222, 
223, 226, 227 

Kano, Jigoro, revives art of 
jiu-jutsu, 193 

Kashima Maru, voyage on, 1 

Katsuura, visit to, 284 

Kimono, use of, 34 

Kipling, Rudyard, on under- 
standing Japan, 75 

Kissing, attitude toward, 98 

Kodokwan, school of jiu-jutsu, 
194 

Kokugikwan, the national game 
building, 104, 107 

Korea, conditions under Japa- 
nese control, 9 

Korean Emperor, anecdotes on, 
8 

Kyoto, Cherry Dance at, 144 

Labor, abundance of, 19; waste 

of, 236 
Landscape gardening, history of, 

169 
Language, peculiarties of the, 53; 

difficulties with, 321 



Leprosy, extent of, 90 
Lunch, the railway, 276 

Maple Club, luncheon at, 116 
Marquis, Don, on reformers, 151 
Marriage customs, 85, 93 
Meiji Tenno, "Emperor of En- 
lightenment," 29 
"Melting Pot," overloading of 

the, 251 
Militarism, slowly waning, 232 
Mirbeau, Octave, on discovery 
of Japanese prints by Claude 
Monet, 332 
Morris, Roland S., address on 
Japanese issue in California, 
244 
Mothers-in-law, dutifulness to- 
ward, 93 
Mourning, costume for, 36 
Muko-yoshi, adopted son-hus- 
bands, 94 
Music, unmelodious to foreign 
ear, 131 

Nabuto, visit to, 302 

Naginata, the woman's weapon 
196 

Namazu, "cause" of earth- 
quakes, 40 

Nara, luncheon party in, 137, 
141 

Nesan, serving maids, 117 

Nitobe, Doctor, on bushido, 76 

No drama, masks used in 49; 
knowledge of, necessary in 
study of the people, 75 

Nogi, Count, story of his death, 
197 

Nurses' occupation popular, 96 



348 



INDEX 



Obi, chief treasure of woman's 
costume, 35; how worn, 36 

Okuma, Marquis, Japan's 
"Grand Old Man," 185 

Old age, deference to, 50 

Oriental Mind, the, 57 

Partitions, removable, 118 
Period of trgmsition, beginning 

of, 184 
Perry, Commodore, "knocking 

at Japan's door," 28; opens 

door to progress, 184 
Physicians, women as, 96 
Picture brides, no longer allowed 

to come to America, 244 
Pipes, diminutive, 130 
Placidity in business and home 

life, 228 
Poems, annually submitted to 

the Imperial Bureau, 165 
Politeness, Japanese ideas of 260 
Politics, lack of interest in, 103 
Population, excess in 231, 233; 

must be balanced by industrial 

expansion, 234 
Prints, Japanese, important col- 
lections of, 331; discovery of 

in Europe by Claude Monet, 

332 
Privacy, lack of in Japanese 

homes, 298 
Public utilities, inefficiency in, 238 

Race, unassimilability of, 253 
Race problems of America, 249 
Railroads, under government 

management, 274 
Restaurant, cost of food and 

entertainment, 151 



Riddell, Miss H., work with 
lepers, 90 

Roosevelt, Quentin, Baron 
Kaneko's regard for, 213, 219, 
227 

Roosevelt, Theodore, on reign of 
Emperor Meiji, 29; interest in 
jiu-jutsu, 193; visit of Vis- 
count Shibusawa to, 210; Vis- 
count Kaneko's regard for, 
213; letter to Baron Kaneko 
on our Japanese question, 223; 
wise attitude toward Japan, 
270 

Sake, how served, 121 

Samurai, strength of the, 70; 
customs and privileges, 192 

Sculpture and architecture. 

SeK-made men, 187 

Segregation of vice, 154 

Servants, courtesy of and to, 
117, 336 

Shibusawa, Viscount Eiichi 
founder of school for actresses, 
96; interview with, 188, 201; 
anecdote of President Roose- 
velt, 210; visit to grave of 
Townsend Harris, 280 

Shimabara, courtesan district, 
Kyoto, 160 

Suicide, prevalence of 51; the 
Oriental view of, 199 

Sunday, as a holiday, 114 

Superstition, prevalence of, 318 

Tails, wild men with, 7 
Tai-no-ura, and the Nativity 

Temple, 287 
Tea, significance of, 68; origin, 69 



INDEX 



349 



Tea Ceremony, or cha-no-yu, 

71, 74, 81. 
Tea Masters, veneration of the, 

73 
Teahouse, entertainment ex- 
pensive, 143, 151 
Teaism, as a study, 68 
Telephone service, inefficiency of, 

238 
Tipping, proper procedure in, 

339 
Tobacco industry, a monopoly, 

130 
Tokugawa, Prince, interest in 

wrestling, 105 
Tokyo, growth, 26; architecture 

and sculpture, 27; adopting 

steel for building construction, 

38 
Tourists welcomed to Japan, 263 
Tray landscapes, eirt of making, 

67 
Tuberculosis, extent of, 90 

Vandalism at historic places, 280 
Vice, commercialized, 154 

Waseda University, now open 
to women, 95; founded by 
Marquis Okuma, 186 
W. C. T. U., activities, 97 
Women, costume of, 32; sedate 



gracefulness of, 81 ; suffrage, 83 
legal status, 84 ;condition slowly 
improving, 95 ; in business and 
professions, 95; the "new 
woman," 97; husbands' atti- 
tude toward wives, 100; posi- 
tion higher in early times, 100 
Wood engraving, era of, 331 
World, New York, editorial on 
Japanese issue in CEihfornia, 
244 
Wrestling, the national sport, 
103 

Yajima, Mrs., leader in W. C. T. 
U., 97 

"YeUow PerU," the true, 246 

Yokohama, the landing, 16 

Yoritomo, legend of, 303 

Yoshinobu, becomes shogun, 
202; held prisoner after con- 
flict with Emperor, 205; battle 
neither sought nor desired, 207 

Yoshioka, Dr. G. founder of 
Tokyo School for Women, 96 

Yoshiwara, courtesan district, 
Tokyo, 154 

Yuasa, Commander, heroism 
at Port Arthur, 195 

Zodiac, belief in the signs of the, 
317 




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